New Zealand opera singer Rhonda Browne in English National Opera's 2025-26 production of HMS Pinafore. Photo: https://www.craigfullerphoto.com/ @craigfullerphotography
Rhonda Browne has gone from the "sublime to the ridiculous" and she's loving it.
One week she's singing Wagner, the next it's Gilbert and Sullivan.
The Havelock North-raised contralto has just made her English National Opera debut singing the role of Buttercup in the operetta, HMS Pinafore.
Her success is reward for years of private lessons, hard work, risk taking and resilience.
Speaking with RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump, Browne says it's two decades since she made the call to move to London to have a go at establishing herself as an opera singer.
Hers was not the typical route. Although Browne had plenty of singing experience - right from childhood, including time with the New Zealand Youth Choir - she hadn't studied music at university (she had done Zoology though).
But with the encouragement of established New Zealand singers, especially the late Rodney Macann, she made the leap.
Luckily, her Ulster-born father meant she already had a British passport, so she could settle in London and work other jobs while taking private singing lessons.
Her father's Ulster ancestry turned out to be doubly lucky after Brexit; folk from Ulster also have the right to an Irish passport, which means Browne can also perform in the EU without the need for any additional visas.
While Browne worked tirelessly to "put herself forward" whenever singing opportunities came her way, she's also kept her feet on the ground.
"If it's in you, you owe it to yourself to give it a go."
Browne also set herself realistic goals, taking the attitude that if she didn't achieve those initial targets, not to give up - "just change the goals".
She remembers early on during her time in the UK taking herself off for a break in Bulgaria and Turkey for a couple of weeks, "just by myself, just to kind of go and think and see what I really wanted to do with my singing".
"And I came back from that trip and my goal was that I wanted to earn a living from my music within five years. I never made the goal of I wanted to sing at Covent Garden, I want to sing at ENO, because I didn't believe that would happen, but I reached that goal within a couple of years and I just kept shifting the goals."
New Zealand opera singer Rhonda Browne in English National Opera's 2025-26 production of HMS Pinafore. Photo: https://www.craigfullerphoto.com/ @craigfullerphotography
Browne's Gilbert and Sullivan role, Buttercup, is a vendor who rows out to ships moored offshore, and who hides a plot twist. Pinafore is an operetta about love, class and mistaken identity, where good old English values come out on top.
But one of the things Browne loves about the production is how in the show's finale (a number about how fine it is to be an "Englishman") the cast members proudly wave the flags of their homelands, not the Union Jack.
Which means flags from Jamaica, Canada, Wales, Scotland, Australia, Malta and, of course, New Zealand.
"It's a very nice moment of international unity in this very British piece of music."
These days, Browne lives in the Cotswolds with her truckdriver partner, but commutes to London and other European cities for work.
Any chance of moving back to New Zealand?
Her partner's keen: "she would move to New Zealand tomorrow if she could, she loves New Zealand".
However, Browne's voice (a dramatic contralto) is very niche - there's not many roles out there.
"But if it was just a little bit closer to the rest of the world, I'd be there tomorrow."
