Get Ticket“It’s a challenging thing to leave one’s home and move away to a different country, to move away from family – and we know that within the Māori and Pasifika communities the importance of the family unit, it’s a huge part of cultural background. To leave all this and to be able to support oneself financially is a huge challenge because opera training takes a very long time – as long as a neurosurgeon – but there’s not the same guarantee of salary at the end of the training.”
We often hear that Aotearoa punches above its weight in many areas for its small population, and while the phrase has become a bit of a cliché, it is very much a truism when it comes to opera.
New Zealand has a proud history of producing some of the world’s best opera singers. Think Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Dame Malvina Major, Jonathan Lemalu, Simon O’Neill and Phillip Rhodes, just to name a few.
And it’s just as much of a truism to say that many, if not most, of our brightest stars are Māori or Pasifika.
“New Zealand has an incredible history of producing singers of the highest calibre who have very successful careers in Europe, and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa would be someone on everyone’s list,” says NZ Opera’s General Director, Thomas de Mallet Burgess, “but before that, there was Inia Te Wiata and in more recent times there are a number of singers who are currently singing internationally at the highest level.”
Recent successes include Benson Wilson at the English National Opera, Filipe Manu at the Royal Opera in Covent Garden, Pene and Amitai Pati at the San Francisco Opera, Natasha Wilson at the Pittsburgh Opera and Manase Latu and Samson Setu – the first New Zealanders to be accepted for the prestigious New York Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Programme.
The roll call of Māori and Pasifika opera talent is an impressive one. The Lexus Song Quest – which often reveals some of our great operatic talents – has been won by Samoan singers for the past five competitions.
It has also been the launching pad for singers such as Jonathan Lemalu and Phillip Rhodes, and the successful Sol3Mio trio, among others.
So, why is it that we produce such great talent on these shores?
“The notion of song at an elemental level is part of Māori culture, it’s part of Pasifika culture – the notion of storytelling through song, the notion of song as a group activity – either through kapa haka or even church singing – that is something that is familiar and embraced by these cultures,” says de Mallet Burgess.
Embracing culture is something the NZ Opera is keen to explore more – it’s already had great success with Ihitai ‘Avei’a – Star Navigator, a collaboration with Tim Finn that explores the relationship between two navigators, Tupaia and Cook.
Last year, the Company toured (m)Orpheus – a retelling of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, directed by Neil Ieremia, re-orchestrated by Gareth Farr, and featuring Black Grace.
“One of the things we’re trying to do as a Company is work out what opera means to Aotearoa and what happens if we start telling our stories,” says de Mallet Burgess. “For me that’s the way forward – to develop works and ideas that use the very rich talent we have – much of which is Pasifika and Māori – in the way of telling our stories.”
These innovations help open up opera to diverse audiences, who may not have previously experienced opera on stage. de Mallet Burgess likens the art form to an oyster – for some people it’s an acquired taste which requires exposure and repetition to appreciate it.
And while there’s no doubt the international world appreciates our singers, and while we like to celebrate success in Aotearoa, it is well known that there is a tendency to favour sports related success above arts and culture – especially in the age of Covid-19.
A recent example may be seen in the roll out of the Covid vaccination programme. Singers, like many performing artists worldwide, have lost well over 80% of their work during Covid lockdowns.
As the signs look towards Europe opening up again in the later part of this year, our opera singers are once again in demand. However, for this to happen, early vaccinations are necessary so that singers can again return to northern hemisphere stages, but it appears artists are not being prioritised for vaccination.
“From what I understand, the difference between singers getting an early vaccination and sports people getting early vaccinations is that officials consider ‘singing’ as a personal matter rather than a competitive matter,” says de Mallet Burgess. “And this is a good example of how the country draws a line between sports and culture. If you’re representing the country in a competitive sport that’s great, but if you’re representing your country artistically, then you’re seen as just representing yourself.”
This is just one challenge that artists have to deal with. The other, for young opera talents in particular, is the challenge that leaving home shores presents.
“It’s a challenging thing to leave one’s home and move away to a different country, to move away from family – and we know that within the Māori and Pasifika communities the importance of the family unit, it’s a huge part of cultural background. To leave all this and to be able to support oneself financially is a huge challenge because opera training takes a very long time – as long as a neurosurgeon – but there’s not the same guarantee of salary at the end of the training.”
Just like Olympic athletes, opera singers need to train and be at peak performance in order to find work. One way of ensuring this would be for New Zealand to invest more in the early identification and subsequent training and development of natural talent. de Mallet Burgess believes a conservatory would help to allow artists to have more sustainable careers.
“We should recognise that we’re producing an export. We’re exporting culture and talent and something that it is unique to New Zealand,” he says. “At the moment it’s haphazard, young singers tend to find their way through – mostly through chance. Not only are they potentially missing out on years of training and career earnings, but we’re just scratching the surface of what we actually have here. We could be doing much more to support the training and development of those singers here in New Zealand. There isn’t a proper professional conservatory of music to anchor the patchwork of support programmes such as NZ Opera’s Artist Development Programme, and the net result is that many of these artists go over to Europe to finish their training and stay there.”
Thankfully many of our great singers have made their way through to the international stage, but as de Mallet Burgess says, how many more talented singers are out there?
“It’s a bit like finding a gold nugget in your garden and not realising that you’re sitting on the motherlode.”
Image: New Zealand Opera School