Katerina Mina on her passion for opera

Words: Alice Cairns

Katerina Mina always knew what she wanted to do with her life. As a child growing up in Cyprus, she begged her parents for music lessons even before she could read. Following her dream led her to London, where she studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and won awards for her powerful, dramatic soprano.

Katerina's road to singing success was not smooth, however. At only 24 she was diagnosed with stage two blood cancer, requiring intensive treatment and eight years of recovery. When she returned to the relentless round of auditioning, she found that her time away from the industry had hampered her budding career, and that casting directors viewed the gap on her CV with suspicion.

“If I don't sing, then I'm not me any more,” she says. “I become frustrated, I feel anger and I lose my sense of power. For me, singing is a way of connecting with my higher self. It's who I am.”

It took all of Katerina's tenacity to rebuild her career after her illness. She has since released her album, Angel of Fire, and performed at venues all over the world, even closing the Starmus festival alongside Stephen Hawking. Now, with artistic and musical director Kelvin Lim, she has created an opera company to showcase fresh talent in a competitive and cutthroat industry.

“Opera Forge is London's newest opera company,” she says. “There are so many great voices around, but very few of those great voices actually get the opportunity to perform on a stage, because the competition is so massive. At Opera Forge, we say great voices deserve great stages. They deserve to get out of their practice rooms.”

Opera Forge's inaugural production will be Wagner's Die Walküre, performed semi-staged at The Duke's Hall in Marylebone and directed by legendary Wagnerian bass John Tomlinson. The singers will be accompanied by the London-based Orpheus Sinfonia.

“We have a brilliant creative team and a cast of 14,” Katerina says. “One of the things we decided early on is that we wanted to focus on singers who live and work in England, so that we can really nurture homegrown talent. We also looked for singers who were 35 and older, because these huge, massive works need mature singers.”

Katerina will be playing Brünnhilde, a demanding role that she has been preparing for with the help of her mentor, the legendary soprano Susan Bullock.

“It's a massive role, but, thank God, it sits like a glove on my voice,” she says. “Even so, it's an intense part – it can be very dramatic in points, and really high up in the voice, then at other times much more vulnerable, really low in the voice. My instrument has to be working at 200 per cent to be able to get through the massive range of the role, as well as the emotion. It's an athletic process, really, creating this muscle memory.”

Alongside her intensive preparations for the role, Katerina has been flexing her muscles as a businesswoman. “It's not just a creative role for me,” she says.”There's a lot of work behind running an organisation like Opera Forge: everything from preparing contracts to managing social media, printing and production.

“The interesting thing is that I don't feel drained – it's almost as if there's an energy that's being channelled, and my inspiration is only increasing the more hours I put into this project.”

And as the Opera Forge team prepare for their inaugural production, Katerina feels more grateful than ever for the sense of purpose and drive that has always brought her back to music, whatever the obstacles.

“I lost both my parents in the last few years,” she says. “It was an incredibly difficult time, but I do truly feel as though my parents are with me now, pushing me on. They never said no to me, they encouraged and supported me in my love of music, and it's like I can still feel their pride in me, propelling me through these new challenges.

“Opera Forge really feels like a purpose for me, it's something I was meant to do. I can't wait to bring it to life.”

For tickets for Die Walküre by Opera Forge at The Duke's Hall, visit operaforge.com. Performances will take place on November 22 and December 6