Flora Edwards

Flora Edwards has had a long performance career in opera in the theatre, on television, solo roles in oratorio and as a recitalist. Her roles for NBR National Opera were Azucena in Il Trovatore and Mrs Sedley in Peter Grimes and The Nurse in the 2003 production of Boris Gudenov. Opera direction has been a large part of her career and she directed more than twenty five chamber operas for students at Massey University’sConservatorium of Music, where she was Head of the Conservatoium. She also directed Il Barbiere di Seville and I Pagliacci for the Dunedin opera Company.
She has devoted much time to singing teacher education in New Zealand in the past twenty years, initiated the formation of a professional association for New Zealand teachers of singing, NEWZATS, brought the Third International Congress of Voice Teachers to New Zealand in 1994.
She is an experienced vocal adjudicator and an accredited examiner for AMEB. Flora has a strong interest in the science of the singing voice and in the knowledge base needed for professionalism in singing teaching. She has published in academic journals, presented papers on vocal teaching at international conferences and undertook two research projects for Massey University.The first was an internationanl investigation on a tertiary qualification for teachers of singing  which resulted in New Zealand’s first university qualification for teachers of singing. The second, “Must the Singing Voice in Age Be Silent?” is an investigation of vocal longevity from the perspective of singers, for which she interviewed more than thirty eminent singers from New Zealand, Australia, England and America. She was inspired by the contact with these superb singers and the obligation to prolong and protect the quality of the singing voice into old age. She presented her work on this topic at the recent Seventh International Congress of Voice Teachers in Paris, where it attracted strong interest, and at a recent NEWZATS conference, held at Waikato University, she presented the research, she had an immediate offer to publish the work in book form. She is now at work on this project.

Contact details:
Room: 305 Kelburn Campus
Phone: 463 5170
Email: f.edwards@massey.ac.nz

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