A young opera singer stopped to administer CPR to a man who had collapsed on the street in Mona Vale, NSW.

Bass-baritone Freddy Shaw, a 21-year-old student at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, was on his way to an exam when a man collapsed across the road, the Manly Observer reported. Shaw rushed over, called the ambulance and began to administer CPR on instructions from the emergency operator.

With assistance from a council ranger, Shaw continued CPR until the ambulance arrived before leaving for his exam.

Freddy Shaw. Photo © Cassandra Hannagan

Shaw is currently in his fourth year of a Bachelor of Music (Performance) degree at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, studying Classical Voice. In May, he performed as Lucifer in Pinchgut Opera’s production of The First Murder – his first featured bass-baritone role. The production earned a five-star Limelight review from contributor Shamistha de Soysa, who called Shaw a “thrilling” performer.

He made his solo debut in Pinchgut’s 2018 production of Athalia, and performed with the company again in Dido and Aeneas in 2024 and Messiah in 2025. In 2024, he was awarded the Humanity Foundation Taryn Fiebig Scholarship. He has also performed with Opera Australia, and in Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s Parrwang Lifts the Sky, among other credits.

Freddy Shaw in Parrwang Lift the Sky. Photo © Stefanie Zingsheim/University of Sydney

“Pinchgut’s Artistic Director Erin Helyard called Shaw a vocalist of “considerable confidence and power, with an appealing copper-burnished timbre”.

Shaw is also the recipient of the 2026 Demant Driekurs Scholarship Song Competition, where he performed works by Hugo Wolf and Schubert, amongst others. Studying with internationally acclaimed Australian baritone Barry Ryan, he currently holds a Sydney Conservatorium Associations Scholarship and is a Chapple/Bremner Scholar.