The Royal College of Music in London has announced Egyptian soprano Laura Mekhail as the recipient of the Andrea Bocelli Foundation’s Community Jameel Scholarship.

Laura Mekhail is the second recipient of the scholarship following Clara Barbier Serrano, a soprano who received the scholarship last year. 

The scholarship will allow Mekhail to embark on the Master of Performance (MPerf) course at the Royal College of Music, one of the top institutions for performing arts in the UK.

Mekhail began singing as part of the church choir in Minya, Egypt before studying music performance at West Virginia Wesleyan College in the United States. After graduation, she taught singing for a year at Chesterbrook Academy, and then in Cairo.

She then launched her solo career as a singer performing at a variety of locations, including the Cairo Opera House, where she showcased an Oriental repertoire — Umm Kalthoum, Fairouz, Sabah, Abdel-Halim Hafez — as well as Western classical music compositions like Bach and Rossini.

The Andrea Bocelli Foundation’s Community Jameel Scholarship is a joint initiative of both the world-renowned tenor Andrea Bocelli and Community Jameel, an international organisation supporting science and technology to tackle global challenges.

Launched in 2019 to support students at the Royal College of Music through scholarships given to talented musicians, grantees are “chosen both on merit — assessed at the audition level — and their need for support to overcome barriers and access the world-class training available at the Royal College of Music,” reads the Andrea Bocelli Foundation press release.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture