Monitoring, May 09 (INP) - Amani Hajji is nothing if not stubborn: for 20 years, she has refused to give up on her dream of making opera mainstream in her native Kuwait. A soprano by training, and with her trademark bob haircut, Hajji is Kuwait’s first opera singer with a small but dedicated local following. The 51-year-old’s journey has not been easy. When she first enrolled in Kuwait’s National Conservatory in 1985, her parents banned her from singing anywhere outside the walls of the school. Fifteen years later, Hajji appeared onstage at the Cairo opera house. The audience settled in for an interlude of oriental folklore. Instead, they were treated to Giacomo Puccini’s repertoire. Hajji has since been invited back five times to perform works by the Italian composer, still her favourite, to Arab audiences in Italian or German. Puccini, she believes, is also the most relatable to Kuwaiti music lovers’ ear, with his emotive, late Romantic style. ‘Sentimental style’ Kuwait opened its first opera house in 2016 - but Hajji was not invited to appear onstage. That’s when she found out about her own dedicated fan base who - to her surprise - had been following her career for years. "The Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli opened the venue, and a lot of Kuwaitis were outraged by my absence," Hajji. "That’s how I discovered that I had an audience who knew who I was and who loved me." Inp/khan