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Outlook: Learning to sing by copying divas on DVDs

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Vuvu Mpufo at the final of the 2016 Hans Gabor International Belvedere Singing Competition

01/10/2019 GMT

Learning to sing by copying divas on DVDs

BBC World Service - Outlook, Learning to sing by copying divas on DVDs

Rising star Vuvu Mpofu discovered opera as a teenager at her home in South Africa

When South African Vuvu Mpofu was a teenager in Port Elizabeth, she saw La Traviata on DVD for the first time and it made her fall in love with opera.  At first, her family didn’t approve of her opera obsession and her friends even mocked her. But Vuvu was determined and started studying opera at university, eventually changing their minds. A year before graduating, her mother died and it was then that opera came to her aid. Rather than counselling sessions, she turned to the art as it “soothed her soul.” Vuvu is now performing at one of the world’s most prestigious opera houses, Glyndebourne in the English countryside. She says that every time she takes to the stage, she thinks of her mother. 

Marine biologist Professor David Scheel wonders what it’s like to be an octopus. He kept octopuses in an aquarium at his university to study their behaviour. Obviously he couldn't spend his whole life at work so he decided to bring one into his own home to observe it day-to-day. The BBC documentary about him and Heidi the octopus is called The octopus in my house. You can find more information here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07kpmn1/p07kpm8m.

András Riedlmayer is a librarian who stood up to a brutal dictator who was accused of trying to destroy another culture. The dictator was Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb leader in charge when Yugoslavia disintegrated, and who sent forces into Bosnia and Croatia, and later attacked Kosovo, which was agitating for independence. András became interested in cultural heritage, growing up in Budapest in the aftermath of the Second World War and he faced Milosevic in court.

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