By all accounts, being a modern international opera singer is a terribly rootless experience, involving flying from one country to the next, spending a few weeks rehearsing and performing one role, then off to a different house with a completely new cast and production, perhaps squeezing in a concert or recital here or there. The days when opera houses would assemble a company for a full season are long gone – ours is the world of the freelance star. Even as he enjoys a remarkable career as an opera singer, the tenor Pene Pati has resisted losing himself in the pressures and demands of his profession. His latest CD confirms his vocal gifts, his musicianship, and, above all, his view that his music must create and strengthen family bonds.
Born in Samoa, Pati moved to New Zealand when his parents emigrated there before he was two, and as a child he would regularly sing on Friday evenings at a retirement home run by his father. At his high school, the music teacher had arranged that everyone who played on the rugby team also had to sing in the choir, so he kept singing, joining more choirs, and eventually winning a competition that allowed him to study with Dennis O’Neill in Cardiff. To raise money for his studies, he and his brother Amitai and cousin Moses Mackay formed the trio SOLΞ MIO, which made them celebrities in New Zealand and cemented their musical friendship. After studies in Wales and in the Adler and Merola programs at San Franciso Opera, Pati was launched.
Pati is frank about how difficult it is to come from a small Pacific Island and to feel as though one belongs in the world of opera, but he has found his own connection to the art form. He explicitly compares the way music is used to convey myths and history in Samoan culture with how music tells stories and connects people through opera, and communication and warmth are hallmarks of his singing. Whether he is delivering the 1982 hit “E Ipo” by Prince Tui Teka and Ngoi Pēwhairangi with the fellow members of SOLΞ MIO or “Che gelida manina” on this CD, he infuses both invitations to love with similar endearing frankness and golden tone.
In addition to honoring his parents, whose love of singing started him off on his operatic trajectory, Pati’s CD also celebrates his brother, who joins him for three tracks, and his wife, the Egyptian soprano Amina Edris, who sings Suzel to Pati’s Fritz in a delightful Cherry Duet from Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz. The three of them team up for the final cut on the album, the trio from act 2 of Halevy’s La Juive. In fact, the French opera selections on this disc are uniformly stunning for their diction, elegance, and polish. Let’s hope opera companies are paying close attention and we might have the chance to enjoy Pati in French opera here in the US soon.
Meanwhile, on the evidence of this disc, Pati will continue to find his own way on the international stage, creating new family and telling stories even as he never forgets the people and place he came from. In his notes to the disc, he cites a Samoan proverb – “E lele le toloa ae ma-au i le vai – The toloa bird flies all over but always returns home to the water.” You can’t say (or sing) it better than that.
