PAULINE du Plessis has the kind of voice that can shatter glass.

Cracking a light bulb in Toronto led to her being asked to leave the stage and she’s made glasses vibrate while rehearsing at Artscape.

At rehearsals for The Phantom of the Opera, Du Plessis says it’s not always a good thing.

“My mother says I didn’t cry, I sounded like an ambulance as a kid,” she says.

She’s since put her range to good use, although she never seriously considered singing as a career until a teacher encouraged her parents to send her to audition at the Pretoria Opera School.

They pushed her beyond her initial fear of the unknown “and I haven’t looked back”.

“My dad said to me: ‘Don’t be stupid. Very few people have the opportunity to live their passion. You can do it for a few years, you can decide six months, six years, 60 years, but while you still have the talent, use it, because the older you get, the more your guts disappear.’ “

Du Plessis calls her mother’s place in Somerset West home because, like many performers, she’s a gypsy who has lived and performed around the world, particularly in South-East Asia and the UK.

She’s been in musicals, acted on TV, featured in ads, and is thinking of studying occupational therapy as a fall-back career.

During her fourth year at the Pretoria Opera School, she sang in her first professional production, Fidelio, and travelled to New York for the Rosa Ponselle International Singing Competition.

“That was a big year for me and it cemented the fact that this was what I’d be doing for a while.”

Du Plessis, who calls herself a teatergogga, has always been attracted more to musicals than to opera.

“Opera has become much more natural as a performing art, though back in the day when I was still doing it, it was quite static and very precise. So, when I kind of moved over to musical theatre, I was happier in my skin because I’m quite laid-back as a person,” says the 39-year-old.

While singing in London in 2000 for Broomhill Opera, she watched The Phantom of the Opera for the first time at Her Majesty’s Theatre and thought it “absolutely amazing”.

“When I was 12 years old, my brother bought me the double LP of The Phantom of the Opera, so it was something I kind of had an obsession with. I didn’t look at the part I’m playing now, of course, everyone looked at Christine. It was so exciting. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be in the show.”

Four years later, she bagged the Carlotta role for the Cape Town premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical.

She sang Carlotta for three-and-a-half years but had to work hard at the role because she’s not naturally a nasty person, nor was she on her way out in terms of her own career. Reprising the character is more comfortable now because she has greater life experience and knows what to expect.

“She’s just a bitch,” Du Plessis says with a little chuckle.

Although the character is written comically, Du Plessis plays Carlotta sincerely.

“In everything that she’s going through, she’s very honest. She knows she’s on her way out and she’s desperately holding on to the position she has. It’s actually quite a sad character,” she adds.

Still, it’s more difficult now because she has to be better than last time and stage fright gets worse with every performance, not better. “I think the only thing that happens is you learn how to fake it better.”

Du Plessis has been around long enough to tell some hair-raising stories about being part of the Phantom family. Like the time in Cape Town that Christine’s (Lana English) costume became caught in a groove in the floor, just before the chandelier came swinging her way.

“Things like that happen, where you get stuck to the scenery and you think: ‘Oh my word, am I going to survive?’ “

For her own part, the story Du Plessis tells is about the ridiculously fast costume change between the first manager’s scene and an opera sequence.

Her dresser once forgot the bodice part of her dress for the opera sequence: “She pre-set everything in the dark. So, out comes the skirt, I step out of the one and into the other…

“They’re taking my wig off and putting the other one on. People are undressing me, I just stand there like a dummy.

“And then, she froze, and she couldn’t even speak, and the sound girl started laughing. I’m, like: ‘What’s up, guys, time is running out?’

“ ‘Pauline, you have no top,’ says the sound girl.”

The dresser tried to force the extra fabric on Du Plessis’s evening gown around her, but it didn’t work: “I couldn’t suck it in.”

Then the sound engineer put the sound up. “It was my cue and the entire audience heard: ‘Nee, ek kannie (No, I can’t), my darling,’ wonderfully loud and it wasn’t like it was in China where they wouldn’t know what was going on.

“By that time, the sound lady was (laughing so hard she was) lying on the floor and she just held up the top that I had on before, so I had a very eclectic frock on. I looked like a complete nut.

“Those types of things happen all the time. For us as performers – okay, I’m a bit of a loony, so I find something like that very funny - but you might get the odd performer who’d be thrown. But the show goes on, you have no choice.”

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