New Face - Soraya Mafi

[SaP]

Soprano Soraya Mafi has left a past as a Selfridges shop assistant to embark upon a career in operaWhere does she come from?

The name may be exotically Persian — her father emigrated from Iran during the 1979 revolution — but Soraya Mafi is a petite and effervescent 25-year-old lyric soprano from Bury, who grew up “wanting to be a Disney princess and mad about Julie Andrews”.

How did she land up in opera?

In her early teens, dance was Mafi’s passion, but an injury stalled her ambitions. Then at 15, she she won a prestigious singing prize and went to study with Sandra Dugdale at the Royal Northern College of Music.Was it plain sailing from there?

Mafi had “a tough time” breaking into the industry. “I worked at Selfridge’s to help pay my fees and they generously sponsored me”, she says, “but it all got on top of me, so I took two years off to sort myself out and met my lovely boyfriend, who wasn’t into classical music and thought that opera was just “singing cover versions.”

What was her big break?

Mafi returned to study at the Royal College of Music with Janis Kelly, when Grange Park’s director Wasfi Kani spotted her in a student show and cast her as the ebullient Constance in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites. This professional debut won her glowing reviews, and she is now back at Grange Park to sing First Niece in Jeremy Sams’ new production of Britten’s Peter Grimes. “Jeremy is wonderful,” she says, “ so humble yet so in control — and he is a mine of hilarious anecdotes!”

What next?

After Peter Grimes Mafi will embark on well-earned backpacking holiday in South-east Asia. A major role in Mozart’s Il Re Pastore at the Chatelet in Paris follws after Christmas, and then she makes her ENO debut in Mike Leigh’s production of The Pirates of Penzance. “But I don’t need goals. My dream is just to make a living as a singer. Doing something I love is quite enough.”