Cape Town Opera this month return to Birmingham Hippodrome to present an epic operatic tribute to the life of Nelson Mandela..

On 11 February 1990, 27 years after he was first imprisoned and in the face of considerable political pressure, Nelson Mandela finally regained his freedom. Four years later, at the age of 75, he would go on to become both the oldest and the first non-white president in South African history.

The image of the serene elder statesman, with his careworn eyes, broad smile and awe-inspiring presence, is now ingrained in minds the world over, yet that familiar picture represents just a tiny portion of his life.

Though his long struggle against apartheid has gone down in history, it's easy to forget about the flawed humanity of the man behind the legend.

 Written and directed by Michael Williams and performed by the outstanding, world-class Cape Town Opera, Mandela Trilogy illuminates a life that spanned almost an entire century, with an innovative score by Mike Campbell and Peter Louis van Dijk.

“Mandela himself said, 'I am more a sinner than a saint,'” says Michael Williams. “You'll see that elder statesman in the final section of the piece, but you're also going to see the brash, eager young man who stole his father's cattle, high-tailed it out of the village on a train and went to work in a mine. You'll see the suave, elegant man in a suit, a womaniser with a cigarette in hand as if he's Cary Grant. You'll see how he made a lot of mistakes and that he originally called for violence, which he later regretted.”

Divided into three acts, each correlating with different periods in Mandela's life, the opera sees three singers - tenor Lukhanyo Moyake and baritones Mandla Mndebele and Yamikani Mahaka-Phiri - portray different incarnations of the character.

“We're three different individuals, and the versions of him are like different characters,” says Mahaka-Phiri. “So every now and then, we might have similar gestures, but mostly Mandela's power resides in stillness. He doesn't need to do much. He can command people just with his voice and his presence, and that's something the three of us really worked on.”

“Nobody can imitate Mandela's charisma,” Williams adds, “but each performer brings his own, and by having different people interpreting him, you start to get a sense of the whole.” 

Alongside the three Mandelas, the show also introduces three of the women in his life - his first wife Evelyn (Pumza Mxinwa), his second wife and partner in politics Winnie (Siphamandla Yakupa), and the jazz singer Dolly Rathebe (Candida Mosoma) with whom he became involved before his second marriage.

“Dolly is a huge icon!” Mosoma explains. “She was an amazing crooner, a beautiful blues and jazz singer, and she was considered to be South Africa's first black pin-up girl.” 

Though her relationship with Mandela has never been widely spoken of, in the 2003 documentary Sophiatown, Rathebe intimated that during the time she knew him in the ’90s, they were close enough that she would have married him if he had asked her. But there were reasons why that was not to be.

“I think she kept herself quite separate from the politics,” says Mosoma. “She wasn't that girl - she just wanted to be a singer. I think in the end he needed someone who was ready to be on the front line with him, and he found that partner in Winnie.”

The rule of three that forms both the basic structure of the show as well as the foundation of the casting and character choices is also echoed in other aspects of the production.

“The whole notion of a triad is important as a literary concept - it gives you balance and rhythm,” Williams explains. “There are the three women in his life, the three prisons that he's in, the three speeches that he makes and three conversations he has with 'White Man'.”

With each of these three acts composed in a different style, the music matches Mandela's story in richness and complexity. Though Mandela Trilogy is officially an opera, it's threaded through with songs in accessible styles, from the folk and traditional music of South Africa, to the popular tunes of the jazz scene Mandela encountered in Sophiatown. Williams sees the show as fundamentally a piece of musical theatre that he hopes can be enjoyed by a wide and varied audience.

“It's such a breath of fresh air!” says Mosoma. “Usually, whether you're going to a musical or an opera, you know more or less what you're getting yourself into, but with this you don't at all.”

“I think it's a lovely mixture of different genres - like a recipe of music,” says Mahaka-Phiri. “We start with some Xhosa opera, and then we move into a drastically different jazz style, where all these opera singers will be dancing like trained theatre performers. And then in Act Three, we've got a more pure operatic style, with 15-minute arias. I think it's fantastic!”

Xhosa - pronounced with a hard, ‘K’-like click that's pretty difficult for Brits to wrap their tongues around - is the language of several South African cultures, including Mandela's own Thembu people. It's also spoken by many - though not all - of the performers in the company.

“The first act is really a sort of journey into the music of the countryside,” says Williams. “Traditional songs are woven into the score alongside new music. I didn't know the language beforehand, but with a company that's about 90% young Xhosa men and women, you do start to get to know it a bit. We have surtitles, so audiences will always be able to understand what’s being sung.”

From the days of his headstrong youth, through his early involvement in politics and a lengthy incarceration from which he was not permitted leave even to attend his own son's funeral, to his eventual, triumphant release, Mandela's story makes for an emotional whirlwind of a production.

“One of the sad things I discovered,” says Williams, “was that while he was in prison, they gave him calendars every year full of photographs of white South Africa. You can see all his notes on them over this 27-year period. Do you know how many days 27 years is? It's nearly 10,000 days - that's how long he was away from society. When they took him out of prison for the first time, four years before his official release, they had to introduce him to things like cell phones - he'd never seen one before. They took him on trips and you can just imagine this old man driving around - at one point in the show he says, 'I was a tourist in a remarkable land.' He didn't even know how to open a can of Coke!”

With a whole new generation born since 1990 having now grown up with only a vague sense of who Mandela was and what he went through, and with racism apparently on the rise in many places, it's vital that his message of equality and reconciliation continues to be promoted.

“I think his death has made it more poignant and also more important,” Williams continues. “The message is very strong - we need to strive for a non-racial society, to not be afraid of the ‘Other’, and to reconcile with our enemies. What a great opportunity to share that through a rousing, foot-stomping, exciting form such as musical theatre - it's a gift of a story!” 

Mandela Trilogy shows at Birmingham Hippodrome on Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 September