Prof Conroy Cupido hails from Cape Town, South Africa. He was the first South African to earn the Doctoral of Musical Arts degree in vocal performance and opera, conferred on him by the University of North Texas. His other degrees include the Master in Music (MMus) and Artist Certificate from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and the Bachelor in Music (BMus) from the University of Stellenbosch. He is a director on the board of Cape Town Opera and the chair of their strategy committee. In October 2023 he was appointed as the fourth director of the School of Music & Conservatory at North-West University.

Prof Cupido’s first professional engagement was in a production of Who killed Jimmy Valentine? by Alan Stephenson, performed at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town at the tender age of 15. During his studies at the University of Stellenbosch, he was selected as a soloist in the Cape Town Symphony Youth Music Festival, performing selected orchestral songs from Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été song cycle with the CTSO. In 1999 he was selected to perform with internationally renowned South African soprano, Mimi Coertse, in her concert, Debuut met Mimi, at the State Theatre in Pretoria. 

While a member of Cape Town Opera’s vocal ensemble, Prof Cupido was recruited by American soprano and professor of voice, Barbara Hill-Moore, to further his studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. During his studies abroad, he was awarded the Sue Johnson Prize for best male opera singer, and he was a finalist in the National Opera Association Voice Competition and the Shreveport Opera Singer of the Year Competition. He was awarded many merit-based scholarships for international study including the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Bursary, The National Arts Council of South Africa Award, the Schollmeier Foundation Bursary, the Dean’s Camerata Opera Scholarship from the University of North Texas, and The Bruce Foote Foundation Bursary. 

Prof Cupido has performed with many local and international orchestras and opera companies including Cape Town Opera, Utah Festival Opera (where he was a resident artist for three seasons), the Dallas Opera, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra and Choir, the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, the Denton Bach Society, and the Con Spirito Orchestra and Choir. He has performed as soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah and Te Deum, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Stainer’s Crucifixion, and many recitals. The operas in which he has performed include Rossini’s Il Babiere di Siviglia, Rorem’s Our Town, Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore, Gounod’s Romeo et Juliet, Verdi’s La Traviata, Il Trovatore, Nabucco and Aida, Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Madama Butterfly, Floyd’s Susannah, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, and Mozart’s Così fan Tutte, Le Nozze di Figaro and Idomeneo. In 2010 he performed in the world première of Jake Heggie’s opera, Moby Dick, at the Dallas Opera with tenor Ben Heppner as Captain Ahab. In 2011 he performed in Europe in a production of Gianni Schicchi by Puccini with the Amalfi Coast Music Festival and Institute. 

He has also performed in art song recitals and productions in Pretoria, Potchefstroom and Dallas, Texas. In 2016 he toured South Africa with an all-Schubert programme with British pianist, Yoon Chung, and presented concerts with Chung in the United Kingdom as well in 2017. 

Prof Cupido regularly adjudicates significant national competitions. He has adjudicated twice for the SAMRO International Singing Competition, the UNISA National Singing Competition, the Voices of South Africa Opera Competition, as well as the Mimi Coertse Singing Competition. He serves as an examiner for the UNISA graded music exams and regularly serves as an external examiner for various tertiary institutions. He is often requested to present master classes and has done so in South Africa as well as the United States. 

He was the musical director for the very successful production Viva Italia: Opera Gala, which was presented at the Aardklop Arts Festival in 2012 with Richard Cock conducting the Johannesburg Festival Orchestra. He was jointly nominated for two kykNET Fiësta awards in 2017 and 2018, respectively, in music direction for productions mounted at the Aardklop National Arts Festival.  

Prof Cupido has been published in the scholarly journals Musicus, Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa, The Journal of Musical Arts in Africa, The South African Journal of Higher Education, and The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, and his book chapter entitled “Enhancing Spirituality through Music Education in the New Apostolic Church” was published by Peter Lang. He was the editor and main author of the book Music, Art and Emotion: Depictions of the Night inspired by Romantic Art Song published by AOSIS in 2022. He has also presented papers at national and international conferences. In 2013 he was nominated as an ambassador of South Africa for an Intercultural Exchange Programme through the Cleveland Foundation (Creative Fusion USA). He is also a lover and collector of fine art and has curated two exhibitions for the North-West University Gallery and the Aardklop National Arts Festival, respectively.  

While completing his doctoral studies, Prof Cupido taught as a teaching fellow at the University of North Texas and maintained a private voice studio before returning to South Africa. He is currently an associate professor at North-West University and teaches applied voice, vocal pedagogy, vocal literature, and Italian and French diction. His students have won major competitions such as the ATKV Musiqanto Competition, the Phillip Moore Competition, the Mimi Coertse Singing Competition, and the UNISA National Singing Competition, and they have also been finalists and semi-finalists in the Belvedere International Singing Competition, Hertogenbosch Singing Competition in Amsterdam, The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, the Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition in Finland, the Galina Vishnevskaya International Opera Singers Competition, the Stenhammar Competition in Sweden, the SAMRO Singing Competition, and the Emmerich Smola Förderpreis Competition in Germany. They have performed at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opera North (UK), Utah Opera (US), the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, Wuppertal Opera House, Teather Chemnitz, the Staatstheater Meiningen, Cape Town Opera, and in the Nordrhein-Westfalen Opera Studio in Germany. In 2013 he was awarded the Prestigious Award for Teaching Excellence from North-West University and in 2017 was awarded two Institutional Research Excellence Awards for Creative Outputs (IRECO).

[2024-11-08]