The provocative character of Musetta in Puccini’s La Bohème is a perennial crowd-pleaser and the perfect role for Aboriginal soprano Sarah Prestwidge, making her Opera Australia debut, writes arts editor HELEN MUSA.

Cheeky, street-savvy and unapologetically sexy, Musetta provides the life-loving counterpoint to the doomed Mimi of the tragedy that is Puccini’s La Boheme. 

Soprano Sarah Prestwidge will be at the Canberra Theatre in Dean Bryant’s touring production of the operatic favourite in mid-June, sharing the role with soprano Cathy-Di Zhang.

When I catch up with her by phone I find she’s not all that far from home. A graduate of Sydney Conservatorium with a Masters from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, she hails from Razorback Mountain, just between Picton and Camden.

She grew up on a dairy farm looking out at the cows on the mountains, which still give her pleasure when she’s there, although these days she divides her time between her family here and her partner in the UK – six months here and six months there. 

Prestwidge studied overseas on an Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music full scholarship and was also selected for the National Opera Studio London’s Diverse Voices program in 2023–24.

In Manchester, she tells me, she could combine practice and theory, cramming the whole lot into two years of intense studies.

“Coming from a smaller town, I think going to London would’ve been just crazy,” she says. 

She’s always proudly identified with her Darug ancestry. Her mum‘s cousin is an elder of the local mob and part of an important reclaiming language project, while Prestwidge herself has worked as a vocal coach helping kids write songs in Darug. 

“My first studies were in music and classical voice, but I’m very passionate about bringing quality music to remote and indigenous people in Australia, which makes this tour so great,” she says.

Last year she starred for the Victorian Opera in Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s opera, Parrwang Lifts the Sky. The title role was written specifically for her. 

She describes the role of the mischievous Musetta in understatement as lighter than Mimi, but notes that as a lyric coloratura soprano, she can also sing roles such as Mozart’s Queen of the Night or Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro.

“Musetta is very different from Mimi,” she says. “She’s flamboyant, bold and attention-getting… it’s lovely to have a bit of scope to play that role.”

Despite the capriciousness, her vanity and her imperiousness in her on-again-off-again relationship with artist Marcello, there’s an element of seriousness in her character too, she says.

Bryant’s production is set in the 1970s in Paris during the aftermath of the 1968 street protests and it also has an element of feminism.

“My character is living in the wake of Simone de Beauvoir. She is not just a party girl. She is self-made, she has survived on her charms and lives on that,” she explains.

A multifaceted character, the softness nonetheless shines through her role, seen in one touching moment just before Mimi dies.

In Act III, fuelled by resentment that Marcello has forsaken his art and gone into house-painting, there’s a rip-roaring row between them, resulting in a memorable quartet where Mimi and Rodolpho also sing.

Prestwidge is right in the middle of a tour to 14 different locations in four states and two territories, but is quick to assure me that OA is generous with days of rest for the singers. 

“I’m just so excited to see these places that otherwise I would never be able to see, and to engage with local groups. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for them to be performing with professionals,” she says. 

Here she is referring to OA’s long-held practice of engaging local choral groups of mostly children, for the chorus. In the ACT, that will be Music For Canberra, training under Tobias Cole.

“This part of my job makes it an operatic dream come true,” she says.

La Bohème, Opera Australia, Canberra Theatre, July 17-19.