Wiradjuri soprano, composer and writer; Shauntai Batzke is a principal artist with Short Black Opera and an Alumna of the Melba Opera Trust. Shauntai holds a BMus at the Melbourne Conservatorium UniMelb. Shauntai has spent two summers in New York in vocal and performance training at Belle Arti Center of the Arts and in 2019 gave a world premier of her original chamber and orchestral compositions at the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival ‘19. She made her debut as a solo artist with Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2020 singing ‘Long Time Living Here’, A musical Acknowledgement of Country composed by Deborah Cheetham AO and sang this same piece for the opening of each performance of MSO’s 2021 season of Peter and the Wolf at Hamer Hall. In June 2021, Shauntai made her debut performance with Victorian Opera in Deborah Cheetham AO’s new opera ‘Parrwang Lifts the Sky’. Shauntai is now in the process of writing an exciting new Australian Musical supported by Creative Victoria and looks forward to presenting it to the world stage within the next two years. Noted productions include; Pecan Summer (Short Black Opera), Ragtime, Showboat (The Production Company), Beginning of Nature (Australian Dance Theatre), RICERCAR (Present Tense Ensemble), Fidelio (Melbourne Opera) and Corrugation Road (Black Swan Theatre)
