Matshikiza won the Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition in Dublin in 2010, and the following year she became a full-time member of the ensemble at Germany's Stuttgart Opera. She has performed several lead soprano roles, including Pamina in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Mimi in Puccini's La bohème; she had already sung the latter role at the Edinburgh Festival. In 2013 Matshikiza was signed to the Decca label and entered the Abbey Road studio to record her debut album, Pumeza: Voice of Hope. The album, with a mix of operatic arias and African songs, appeared in 2014, and it could not have had a more timely public appearance to promote it: Matshikiza performed at the opening of the Commonwealth Games shortly after it appeared, to a television audience of around one billion people. She sang a song from Scotland called "Freedom Come-All-Ye" that, although it mentioned Nyonga Township, she had never heard before. The exposure brought Matshikiza a round of high-profile appearances in 2015 and 2016, including one with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome under Antonio Pappano, singing the world premiere of Bread, Water, and Salt, a cantata by Luca Francesconi set to a speech by former South African president Nelson Mandela. Matshikiza's second album, Arias, appeared in 2016. ~ James Manheim, Rovi