Just four months after changing from mezzo to soprano, Lewis is awarded the prestigious $43,000 bursary.

After delivering a stellar performance at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Verbrugghen Hall yesterday, Melbourne-based soprano Elizabeth Lewis, originally from Queensland, was announced as the winner of the Lady Fairfax New York Scholarship by the Opera Foundation for young Australians’ panel of judges, Bradley Daley, Roxane Hislop, and Limelight columnist Guy Noble.

The $43,000 bursary will enable Lewis to study with internationally acclaimed vocal, language and movement coaches in New York to help further develop her skills as a performer and offer invaluable exposure on the world stage. Her win is even more remarkable given that Lewis made the bold decision to switch voice types earlier this year from mezzo-soprano to soprano. “My teacher Lisa Gasteen and I had been talking about it for a little while,” Lewis explains. “But when we first started to explore it about two years ago I had just been engaged as a young artists with Victorian Opera. I uprooted myself from Brisbane to move to Melbourne, and that was such a big change I felt I couldn’t uproot my voice as well, at...