SYMPHONY CHOIR Archives
Tenor : Arthur Swan
Arthur Swan studied opera at the South African College of Music and was a member of Cape Town Opera’s Young Artists’ Programme.
He has been in demand on both the concert and opera stage, in repertoire ranging from the baroque to late romantic.
He has performed most of the standard oratorio repertoire as well as some lesser-known works.
His opera repertoire includes works by Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Bizet, Puccini and Offenbach. Arthur’s forays into operetta include works by J. Strauss II and Gilbert and Sullivan.
After a professional career that took him from Cape Town to Windhoek and London to Hong Kong, Arthur is now happily settled in Cape Town.
Alto: Lente Louw
Lente Louw is an established oratorio, chamber music and ensemble singer, originally from Pretoria.
She holds an LLM from North West University, where she began her voice training under Werner Nel.
After relocating to Cape Town, she regularly sang under the baton of Barry Smith from 2008 until his retirement in 2015.
In 2015 she completed the practical requirements for an MMus in Singing Performance at the University of Stellenbosch.
Having developed a keen interest in early music, she founded the Lutesong duo for early music with lutenist husband Uwe Grosser in 2017.
They have performed at arts festivals and concert venues in Cape Town and Germany.
This expanded to the Lutesong Consort, an ensemble of up to 12 singers and lute-family instruments that specialize in vocal repertoire from mostly the 16th and 17th centuries.
They regularly perform at the Cape Town Baroque Festival and the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra for performances and educational projects.
Lente teaches singing at Bishops Diocesan College and Herschel School for Girls in Cape Town.
Baritone: William Berger
William Berger was a member of the Drakensberg Boys’ Choir and the inaugural recipient of the Deon van der Walt UNISA/SAMRO bursary at age 17, before commencing his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London supported by the Kathleen Ferrier Bursary Award and the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust.
William has distinguished himself as a performing artist on the international stage and has appeared in both the Royal Opera House, London and Kennedy Center, Washington D.C.
Recent local engagements have included regular collaboration with the Cape Town Baroque Orchestra including Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beate Vergine, Mahler’s Rückert Lieder with the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra,and Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs du Perles and Le Nozze di Figaro for Cape Town Opera.
A former Principal Artist with English National Opera, William Berger was awarded the honour “Associate of the Royal Academy of Music” in 2009.
Soprano : Elsabé Richter
Elsabé Richter has a M. Mus. degree in Vocal Performance from the North-West University, where she studied under baritone Werner Nel. During her studies she was awarded numerous prizes and bursaries, most notably a Norwegian scholarship for a year’s academic study at the Norwegian Academy of Music.
Here she studied under the guidance of Svein Bjørkøy, Håkan Hagegård and Mona Julsrud.
She has received masterclasses from various singers and musicians including Kobie van Rensburg, Marcel Beekman, Maarten Koningsberger, Albie and Hanna van Schalkwyk, Mimi Coertse, Erica Eloff, Eric Müller, Patricia Misslin, Paul Kiesgen and Lawrence Zazzo.
Her repertoire encompasses a wide range of early music, art songs and opera as well as oratorio and other sacred works.
She is a voice lecturer at Stellenbosch University and also teaches at La Rochelle Girls’ High School.
She regularly performs with various ensembles, choirs and orchestras.