TARYN FIEBIG

PRINCIPAL SOPRANO, OPERA AUSTRALIA

Fiebig, 45, is one of Australia’s most versatile talents. Not only is the opera singer a Helpmann Award-winning performer with an exhaustive list of major opera roles to her name, the Perth-born artist is also an accomplished concert cellist.

She talks about it casually, as if it’s no big deal, just “one thing leading to another”.

“Did I have a great end plan? No, I don’t think so,” she says. “I didn’t put all my eggs in one basket, so the fact that I’ve had great success is wonderful but it wasn’t my absolute end game. My end game is music. I’m fortunate in that I play the piano and the cello and I also sing. I’ve always got music in my life in some form or another.”

Fiebig supported herself as a cellist and taught while she waited for her operatic career to take off. “I did two years of full-time study, and being a freelance musician you say yes to everything. You don’t have a 40-hour week, super or holiday pay. You say yes to every single gig because you don’t know when your next one is coming.

“I would also teach from 6.30 in the morning, come home from a full day of rehearsing, learning opera, and then teach until I had to go to bed.”

She never regarded it as hard work because “music

It’s a romantic notion to think you can solely be an artist – you need an occupation”

TARYN FIEBIG