Madiba The African Opera will debut at the State Theater in South Africa today. It's a dramatic musical retelling of the early life and times of Nelson Mandela. Little is known about his early childhood and the opera is going to focus on his later years. It's all been created by Mandela's great nephew.

It was just a matter of time. We've had Mandela on screen at the time of his death just five months ago. And now here, at the State Theater in Pretoria, final rehearsals are taking place for Madiba The African Opera.

It was Nelson Mandela's great nephew who believed a story needed to be told about the great statesman. This has been done through a host of books, autobiographies and forms. But Madiba The African Opera presents the life of a man through song, orchestra, drums into the storytelling of how Mandela ran away to Johannesburg because of an arranged marriage, how he became a lawyer, his courtship with Winnie Mandela and his prison years.

I'm the conductor, and the musical director and also the orchestrator of the opera. It's really good for us to do it now, to also remind people cuz people soon forget. We've just had an election. So people forget. Just remind them of the nation builder this man was, that we have him and others of course, but he was really the protagonist and he is the one that the stroy can be told through and that's what the beauty of the opera is. It tells us the story of many South Africans through one man. So we feel that we've been blessed with this opportunity.

He's been described as the man of moral inspiration and respect.

Yeah, it's quite overwhelming to sing really highly emotional type of songs and you know the message that she always has to send through is always teary. It's always devastating. And it's difficult to, you know, to execute this kind of a role because there is nothing that is documented.

If he was alive today and he was watching the opera, what do you think he would make of it?

I think he would be very teary. He was really a very soft person, you know. He really had a really soft side of him.