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Ekaterina Shelehova, coloratura soprano, made a sensation on Italia’s Got Talent. This summer she is singing the role of Despina in Brott Opera production of Cosi Fan Tutti in Hamilton, in July.
Hamilton opera singer Ekaterina Shelehova goes viral after singing on ‘Italia’s Got Talent’
Hamilton opera singer Ekaterina Shelehova, a Westmount Secondary grad, wowed them at ‘Italia’s Got Talent.’ The video clip of her performance on that show has gone viral, garnering 28 million views
Ekaterina Shelehova, coloratura soprano, made a sensation on Italia’s Got Talent. This summer she is singing the role of Despina in Brott Opera production of Cosi Fan Tutti in Hamilton, in July.
That Westmount Secondary grad who showed so much promise at the Hamilton school in her teens — she’s now 25 — started her audition on Italia’s Got Talent on a low note. Quite literally.
She ended on a high one, up there in the registers that make collectors of fine glass nervous. A very high note — literally AND figuratively.
Her performance, which was praised by all the judges, swept up the Italians in a viewing frenzy, both on TV and on the internet.
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That was late February of this year. By early March the performance had been seen by 8 million viewers, through Italy and across Europe.
“It went viral ... twice,” says a still startled Ekaterina Shelehova, with a bemused humility in her voice, her amazing voice.
In early summer, the clip got noticed again by a popular performer in Argentina who started sharing it around. Soon the viewership re-exploded, says Ekaterina, this time hitting heights of 28 million.
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Ekaterina, who was born in Kaliningrad, Russia, but came to Canada very young and grew up on the West Mountain, spent five years at the Conservatorio G. Verdi in Milan where she earned both a Bachelor and a Master’s degree in opera, with outstanding marks.
Opera studies at that level make medical school look like macarena lessons. I’m exaggerating — medical school’s hard but at least it’s other people’s spleens you’re learning to take out, not your own that you’re coughing up trying to hit those notes, and with exacting nuance.
Ekaterina uses the word “gruesome,” only half jokingly, to describe the rigours.
“It’s so difficult but fun difficult,” she says.
She has, in her young life, won prizes in opera competitions such as Concorso Lirico Salvatore Licitra in 2015, Concorso Internazionale Cleto Tomba in 2016. She won the Young Opera Hope award at the Magda Olivero International Competition in 2016 and The Public Choice Award at the Giuditta Pasta Competition in 2018.
So when she stepped onto the stage at Italia’s Got Talent and started singing, the puzzled grimaces on the judges’ faces were understandable. The sound that came out of her mouth was almost primordial, a low expressive kind of a growl or pant, part animal in its tone, part geological, like glaciers shifting.
“It is throat singing,” she explains.
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Those expressions on the judges’ faces turned to ones of awe and admiration as those beginning sounds developed into gorgeous trills and other harmonic and tonal effects, some suggesting the songs of birds and others the sounds of the wind and even of the earth itself.
Ekaterina Shelehova in performance.
Ekaterina Shelehova
During the year of COVID, Ekaterina spent time in Mexico learning improvisation and learning music from nature and the earth.
In her Italia’s Got Talent audition she wanted, she says, “to show what the voice can do, the whole process. It was all improvised. I wanted to bring it to the point where we don’t need words or even melody to capture what we’re trying to express.”
It was a gamble but it paid off. Her performance managed to be beautiful and meaningful without conventional melodic structure and without libretto or words of any kind.
By the middle of her spot the audience — and even the judges — were spontaneously clapping. By the end, they were on their feet.
Ekaterina didn’t win the competition but she won many hearts and an enormous global audience through internet hits. She has, since that appearance on the show, been offered a contract to create music for a movie soundtrack — an Italian film adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” She’s also enjoying waves of new followers on her YouTube and Instagram pages.
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Now back in Hamilton, she will be singing the part of Despina in Mozart’s “Cosi Fan Tutte,” being staged, along with “Popopera,” by Brott Opera in a special drive-in format from June 24 to July 14 at Ancaster Fairgrounds.
“It is a role I always wanted to sing,” says Ekaterina.
She started taking singing lesson when she was but 3 years old. As a baby she would sing the melodies her brother played as he was learning piano.
As early as 2008, she was winning first place in Kiwanis competitions and at age 10 she was in her first opera, “Carmen,” in the children’s choir. She has sung with Opera Ontario, Opera Bel Canto, and with StageToneScape. She won three gold medals at the Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
She also branched out — and still does — into popular music, in the manner of Sarah Brightman and Josh Groban, as is reflected in her 2012 album “Moonlight.”
Among her biggest influences were Russ Weil and the late Cindy Rees at Westmount.
“She helped build me as a theatrical performer,” says Ekaterina.
has been a reporter and columnist with The Spectator for 30 years, writing culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour. Now his column focuses on human interest, from personalities to twists in the social fabric and colourful echoes of local history. His passion is to capture this city’s flavour through its people and places; his conviction is their stories, opened forth in the right way, will wake up your hearts.
