Soprano Pretty Yende is a world champion

WORLD champion soprano Pretty Yende never knew opera existed until a soaring score of an airline commercial came over the television in her township home 10 years ago.

The flash of 19th century French composer Leo Delibes' classic Flower Duet from his opera Lakme so moved the teenager growing up without librettas and arias that she asked a high school teacher the next day what the music was.

"He told me it's called opera," recalled Yende, now a resident at Milan's La Scala, a decade after telling her teacher: "I need to do that."

From Thandukukhanya in Eastern Cape to northern Italy, the 26-year-old was recently handed joint top honour in the Operalia world opera competition founded by Spanish maestro Placido Domingo.

"All I wanted to do was to know how to sing opera," said Yende.

South African black opera voices have burst onto the international stage, mirroring the country's shift to democracy, decades after white Afrikaner soprano Mimi Coertse debuted at the Vienna State Opera in 1956.

Experts say their rise is no sudden outpouring of new talent but rather that all-race freedom in 1994 levelled the playing field to allow those with remarkable gifts who were stifled under apartheid to enter the game.

"At the moment our best singers are black," said Virginia Davids, head of vocal studies at the South African College of Music based at the University of Cape Town.

South Africans can be found from Tel Aviv to London, with soprano Pumeza Matshikiza performing at Monaco's royal wedding - where the principality's Prince Albert II married South African Charlene Wittstock in July - and Sweden-based Dimande Nkosazana taking first prize in a competition in Italy.

"These singers have always been there but they have always been ignored," said Davids.

But local singers are forced to seek international stages, since Cape Town Opera is the only full-time troupe in the country and probably the entire African continent with regular productions locally and tours abroad.