Opera singing was where her heart was, so she changed her tune and went from studying physics to music, almost at the speed of light.
"I’ve dreamed of this life since I started singing when I was 11.
"When I went to university, I started doing physics and that lasted about two weeks because I just wanted to go back to singing.
"It felt wrong to be doing anything else. I can’t imagine life as a physicist.
"The bright lights of the stage were calling."
Now, the third-year University of Otago music student and opera singer has been awarded a $10,000 Fund for Acting and Musical Endeavours (Fame) Trust Emerging Practitioner Award.
The Dunedin 21-year-old said it was "super exciting".
She had been accepted to do a post-graduate certificate at the Queensland Conservatorium, in Brisbane next year, but she had been worried about whether she could fund the study. Now that she had received the scholarship, it was assured.
"It’s given me the financial freedom to focus on my singing now, rather than finding the funds to do the singing."
She hoped the degree would put her another step closer to being an opera star on the international stage.
"I want to be on the big stages of the opera houses around the world.
"I would love to make a career of travelling from one country to the next, performing."
Over the past two years, she had had a string of singing successes, including reaching the grand finals at the 2022 Lexus Song Quest and the 2022 North Shore Becroft Aria competition, as well as being a finalist in the Napier Brayden Caldicott Aria competition in 2021. She was one of seven Emerging Practitioner Award winners, who were given scholarships to develop as instrumentalists, operatic singers, composers, producers, conductors, taonga puoro players, dancers, choreographers, producers, kapa haka leaders, actors, directors, playwrights, storytellers, and theatrical technicians.
