For many people, going to see an opera performance would be a once in a blue moon occurrence, because of price, lack of interest or the idea that opera is an upper-class pastime.

Katie Blackwell, Olivia Bell and Megan Strachan are three sopranos hoping to change how opera in the UK is perceived and experienced.

“Up until 20 to 30 years ago,” said Katie, “opera was you stand on stage, sing your aria and then you walk off and the next person comes on. It’s an accurate stereotype.

“Personally, it’s a stereotype that I’d like to bash to pieces with a very big rock,” Megan adds.

The three women, all still only in their early twenties, met while performing with Oxfordshire based Opera Anywhere, a company that tours throughout the UK.

Performing in shows like ‘Sister Angelica’ and ‘Pirates of Penzance’ together, they quickly grew to be friends before Megan suggested they get together and tour as a trio.

“I’m the founder as in I was the one who sent the Facebook message out asking if anyone wanted to be involved in this mad idea,” she explained.

“Over the past few years I’ve been emailing company after company and sometimes they reply, sometimes they don’t and sometimes they’ll offer you an audition then six months will go by and they’ll say they didn’t think you were right for the role.

“I just thought, why am I emailing all these people to get told ‘no’ a thousand times, when I have some friends who have their heads screwed on and we can just do this ourselves?”

Olivia added: “In the opera world, sopranos are so often competing for the same roles, so I jumped at the chance to be able to do something collaborative with other female singers.

“We’ve worked together so I knew we’d be able to make a go of this and things have snowballed from there.”

The group called themselves ‘Sorelle’ – Italian for ‘sisters’ – after performing together in ‘Sister Angelica’, an opera based in a convent.

The opera was Katie’s directorial debut, and the extra skills that each of the trio possess was another plus point to beginning the new venture.

“Katie works as a stage manager on all of the shows and she’s a complete wizard backstage,” said Megan, who comes from Nailsworth. “Olivia wrote our fantastic press release – she works in journalism. When I started putting together lists of all the people in the press I was just like “Olivia help!

“And Megan is our driving force especially for this concert because it’s local to her,” continued Katie.

“It’s really nice that we’re all singers but we can bring extra things to the table because we’re doing this ourselves – we don’t have a production team behind us organising everything.”

For the trio, Sorelle offers a chance to not only put together their own performance, but also to break down stereotypes surrounding opera and women in the industry.

It’s a subject they all feel especially passionate about.

Megan said: “So often women in opera are lovesick maidens or evil horrendous queens and actually so many female characters are so funny.

“I’ve personally worked with a few men – who will go unnamed – who seem incapable of believing women can be funny because it’s not the character archetype.”

“Because of when so many operas were written,” continued Olivia, “the women in them are often subservient or extras.

“However, there are a lot of strong women who are overlooked, and even those written in as lovers or plus ones to male roles as it were, have their own stories.”

And for Katie, the notion that opera is only for those older generations in the upper echelons of society is something that she hopes Sorelle will go towards debunking.

“We have a huge problem at the moment in opera and classical music in general that it’s stereotyped as really elitist art,” she said, “and I don’t think opera companies are helping that with their ticket prices.

“With Sorelle we really want to involve people who may not have seen opera or heard it before.”

“In place of a normal day job, I do a lot of busking and one of the things I’m always struck by is how many very young children seem to love it,” added Megan. “I’ll have small children come and literally sit on the ground and watch me until their parents come along and shoo them away.

“And I wonder what we do to children between the ages of about six to ten because somewhere in that period they get taught that opera isn’t for them.”

Sorelle’s inaugural concert will be at St George’s Church in Megan’s hometown of Nailsworth, on Saturday 6th April.

“The venue is my local church where I did my very first solo when I was nine,” said Megan.

“For me personally I have a very good support network here, and I also know a lot of people who like classical music there’s just not enough of it on locally.

Katie added: “One of the things we’ve learnt from touring with small companies is the smaller villages we tour to are the ones that have always sold out.

“Its extraordinary people come from all over the countryside to see opera – these are people who really genuinely value someone coming locally to do a concert.”

The concert is called ‘Belle Nuit’ – ‘beautiful night’ – and will see the girls perform songs centered around the theme of night time, as Katie explains.

“The first half of the show is all about the beauty of night, the moon and lullabies,” she said.

“Second half is going to be opera after dark, some jazzy stuff, some sexy ladies of opera, some Carmen in there, some Broadway and a little bit of musical theatre. There’s something for everyone in the programme with some really popular pieces that everyone knows.”

“Preparing for our inaugural concert has been such an exciting time,” added Olivia. “I’m now really excited to just sing the music we’ve chosen with the others.”

“We have other concerts in the pipeline including concerts in London and Oxfordshire, with a lot of repertoire ideas. This first concert is only the beginning!”

For tickets and more information visit www.sorellesingers.com