Hamilton native, Maddie Nonoa-Horsefield, completed a Bachelor of Music (First Class Honours) at the University of Auckland in 2015, majoring in Classical Performance. Her introduction to opera came from a busker on Wellington’s Lambton Quay. At the age of nine, she was selected to be a member of the children’s chorus in Carmen.
She has been awarded a place in the Guildhall’s Opera Studies Masters Programme, which is made up of only twelve new students per year from an international pool of applicants. She will receive operatic coaching from tutors from within school as well as international teachers, the opportunity to perform in operatic extracts publicly in the first year and to be cast in the main operatic production in her second year.
Maddie is a former member of the New Zealand Youth Choir, and an alumna of the New Zealand Singing School. Last year she was a Dame Malvina Major Emerging Artist with New Zealand Opera, where she performed as Papagena in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. She was also cast as Joyce in Brass Poppies, a new New Zealand work performed at both the Auckland and Wellington Festivals.
In addition, Maddie placed third in the prestigious Lexus Song Quest, and was awarded the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation scholarship for the Most Promising Singer.
Maddie’s family moved to New Zealand from Samoa and Niue and she aims to continue their legacy “that through hard work and persistence, coupled with rightly timed nerves of steel, anything is possible!”
In the future, she plans to undertake operatic roles in America, the UK, and Europe as well as New Zealand.
Bizet, Carmen, “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”
She has been awarded a place in the Guildhall’s Opera Studies Masters Programme, which is made up of only twelve new students per year from an international pool of applicants. She will receive operatic coaching from tutors from within school as well as international teachers, the opportunity to perform in operatic extracts publicly in the first year and to be cast in the main operatic production in her second year.
Maddie is a former member of the New Zealand Youth Choir, and an alumna of the New Zealand Singing School. Last year she was a Dame Malvina Major Emerging Artist with New Zealand Opera, where she performed as Papagena in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. She was also cast as Joyce in Brass Poppies, a new New Zealand work performed at both the Auckland and Wellington Festivals.
In addition, Maddie placed third in the prestigious Lexus Song Quest, and was awarded the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation scholarship for the Most Promising Singer.
Maddie’s family moved to New Zealand from Samoa and Niue and she aims to continue their legacy “that through hard work and persistence, coupled with rightly timed nerves of steel, anything is possible!”
In the future, she plans to undertake operatic roles in America, the UK, and Europe as well as New Zealand.
Bizet, Carmen, “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”
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