Mr Wilson (19) is flying to London to sing at the Royal Albert Hall in March after winning a New Zealand Combined Choral Orchestra scholarship recently.
"It's a bit of a dream come true to think I'll be singing at Royal Albert Hall, really. The only other place I think I'd prefer would be the Sydney Opera House,"
Mr Wilson's started his tilt at the scholarship by winning an annual singing competition in Nelson held by the Teapot Valley Summer School in conjunction with the New Zealand Combined Choral Orchestra.
The unusually-named school was formed 12 years ago by Inga and Carl Browning. Mr Browning is a co-founder of the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and helped set up the travel scholarship.
Mr Wilson, who was raised in Palmerston North, is in the third year of his study of performance voice and the second year of performance piano at the University of Otago .
A member of New Zealand Secondary School Choir, he has graduated to the New Zealand Youth Choir, but expects another step up when he sings alongside some of Great Britain's most talented singers.
"I'm hoping it will open up some doors for me for pursuing study there in the future. It's so much bigger than anything I've ever been involved with before." The sheer size of the British youth choir - it has 150 members compared with the 50-strong New Zealand Youth Choir - would bring its own rewards, he said.
His trip involves 11 days of singing lessons and performance alongside the British choral members. Mr Wilson is also planning to visit the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and go to Europe.
"I really want to visit Germany and have some [singing] lessons there. Just because it's such a wonderful singing language," he said.
Mr Wilson's singing coach, university senior lecturer in voice Judy Bellingham, was full of praise for her charge.
"He is a true tenor and there is a shortage of tenors in New Zealand. He is very musical, plays the piano, and is a wonderful young man," she said.
Mr Wilson said he auditioned "on a whim" to join the university's music school, which had been crucial to the subsequent development of his voice.
