Pene Pati on Rodolfo (and rugby!)

The ebullient Samoan tenor Pene Pati made an enormously likeable debut on Warner Classics back in 2022, with a self-titled recital of French and Italian opera arias which was praised in BBC Music Magazine for his 'generosity of spirit and sweet-toned elegance' and won him a Young Artist of the Year prize at the Opus Klassik Awards. A second, equally impressive album marking the centenary of Puccini's death followed in September, featuring excerpts from Turandot and La bohème as well as rarities from operas by Mercadante, Halévy and American-born French composer Ernest Guiraud.

In a break from rehearsals for his Covent Garden debut in La bohème last week, Pene spoke to me about why he finds the character of Rodolfo so relatable, the pleasure of performing alongside his wife Amina Edris (who sings Musetta in this production), how the intervention of Kiri Te Kanawa prompted his move from New Zealand to Cardiff to study at the Wales International Academy of Voice, and why rugby and singing have always been closely intertwined for him since childhood...

It’s a bold choice to do this interview al fresco - it looks absolutely freezing out there!

I’m feeling nice and crisp, actually:  I’m one of those odd Pacific Islanders who seek out the cold instead of the sun! And I’m having the time of my life, because I couldn’t wait to sing Bohème here: I think a lot of us Commonwealth singers see Covent Garden as the pinnacle. The whole experience so far has been amazing, with so much kindness and fun in the rehearsal-room. And this is a very young Bohème: it’s the first time I’ve sung Rodolfo and been the oldest person in the cast! I think that makes it clear that these characters are in this situation through happenstance - if you’re still a Bohemian at sixty, that’s got to have been a lifestyle choice!

How sympathetic do you find Rodolfo?

I’m glad you asked, because I’ve had a lot of time to think about this character: this is my fifth Bohème. We always think about Rodolfo as the quintessential lover – the dreamer, the poet, the romantic – and we neglect everything else about him. It’s only in the first aria that he gets to be himself, to forget the world for a while and honestly explain who he is. But I think what people connect to is not the romantic side: to me, his poems are his way of making sense of a difficult world. He’s an artist who’s grappling with poverty and uncertainty…and then of course he comes face-to-face with the fragility of life through Mimì, which adds another layer of fear and anxiety. 

And I think that’s why he’s relatable: not all of us have been caught in this amazing romantic gust of wind, but we’ve all been in moments when we feel powerless because someone we love is suffering. Perhaps we’ve had family-members diagnosed with terminal cancer, perhaps we’ve had friends who’ve committed suicide – we all know what it’s like to love a person intensely, but not be able to do anything to help them. In that moment when Rodolfo screams her name at the end, the audience recognise that feeling: they aren’t just thinking ‘Ah, there goes the love of his life!’.  

What makes it even more relatable for me is that I’m exactly that person: the one smiling through the pain and saying ‘It’ll be OK!’ while their world is crumbling.  I feel like if I’m smiling it makes everyone else feel comfortable, but inside I’m hurting like hell. And I try to show that conflict in every decision I take on stage in this role.

Your wife is singing Musetta in this production: do you get to work together often?

She’s here now, just off-camera! This is the second time we’ve done Rodolfo and Musetta together, and she’s also sung Mimì with me. It’s happened by complete chance - we never wanted to put ourselves out there as a package-deal. The rest of the cast didn’t even know we were married until Speranza [Scappucci, the conductor] worked it out in rehearsal! And I think that’s sweet, because we’ve always been very keen to be hired as individual artists in our own rights. It’s no big secret, but if you don’t ask then we won’t tell!

Your first performance is going to be a schools’ matinee - does that bring a different energy from a standard performance?

I love a kids’ matinee! People always say you can relax and enjoy the show because the pressure’s off - but in a way, kids are the most honest critics and if you’re perceived as a bad person then they’re gonna boo you! I recently did a kids’ matinee of Butterfly and of course they booed Pinkerton because they think he’s a loser – I just play up to it!

Did you sing from childhood?

A lot of Polynesians sing in choirs or at church, and at my high school you weren’t allowed to play in the first rugby-team unless you also sang in the choir: no debate, no exceptions. Our music teacher and PE teacher came up with the idea to bridge the gap between being a choir-boy and a jock (if I can say that!), and it worked really well: the idea was to show us that the discipline for a musician and a sportsperson is exactly the same. Of course it meant that the choir was suddenly full of burly boys belting out Tallis’s If ye love me, which must’ve looked a little strange! 

I came to really love choral singing, and from there the music director asked if I’d ever considered pursuing solo singing. At that point I was studying piano and conducting, and also computer science; I thought there was no way I was going to end up being a singer, but life had other plans... 

That combination of rugby and singing must’ve made Wales feel like a bit of a home-from-home…

Yes, and I carried on doing both when I moved to Cardiff: while I was studying at WIAV I played rugby for The Saracens. Last week I was having coffee outside Covent Garden, and this guy came over and said ‘Remember me? I’m your rugby-mate from Cardiff! I can’t wait to tell the boys that I just ran into you about to make your debut at the Royal Opera!’.

So how did the transition from rugby-playing choir-boy to opera-singer come about?

More and more people started encouraging me to pursue opera, and I resisted for so long because the idea of a degree in singing was just bizarre to me: singing is so natural for us Polynesians, so it felt like the equivalent of doing a degree in walking! And at the time there wasn’t much support for Pacific singers in New Zealand: I think there was an underlying perception that we wouldn’t take it seriously, so I got none of the scholarships. That was OK, because it just pushed me even harder. 

When I was 21 I entered the New Zealand Aria Competition, which was my first big chance. My friends all told me that nobody ever wins it on their first attempt, and I couldn’t help thinking ‘But what if they did…?’. I told nobody I was entering, because I didn’t want my parents and siblings to be disappointed if I didn’t get anywhere, so I went alone and sang Lensky’s aria…and I won! I remember looking out at the audience and thinking ‘God, this was a mistake – here I am holding this trophy and my family aren’t here to see it’. When I got home my mum scolded the hell out of me, because she said they would have supported me regardless! 

There was one competition in Sydney which was the final straw: I thought ‘If I win, then I will continue with this career - and if I don’t, that’s God calling me in another direction’. I ended up winning, and Kiri Te Kanawa was there. She said: ‘Dennis O’Neill wants to have you at his school in Cardiff, take you under his wing and guide you’. I thanked her, but when Dennis got in touch, I declined his email twice because I thought it was a scam! Here was somebody inviting me to do a Master’s course when I didn’t even have a Bachelor’s. I insisted he’d got the wrong person, but he insisted right back, so I threw caution to the wind and moved to Wales. I’d done a concert in New Zealand to raise some funds, and I set off with 680 pounds in my pocket for the whole year…

Was that concert with your trio SOLΞ MIO?

This was a solo concert, about a year before we formed the trio. Money was tight, so I went to my brother Amitai and our relative Moses Mackay and said ‘Look guys, no-one’s supporting us so how about we get together, tour round New Zealand and fund ourselves – wouldn’t it be cool to reach the top and say we did it on our own?’. At first they were a bit reluctant, but I persuaded them to give it a go.

Have you and your brother done any operas together?

At the beginning of the year we did Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda, one of the first operas to have two tenors sharing a stage in good-sized roles. The only other time we’ve been on stage together was in San Francisco, where I was singing the Duke in Rigoletto and he was Borsa. There are quite a few lesser-known bel canto operas with a pair of tenors: we did a duet from Mercadante's Il bravo on the new album, where they’re both going head-to-head and it ends up being a tie!

What did you learn from Dennis O’Neill, once you realised his email was genuine?!

So much that we could be here all day…! The most important thing was how to place the voice in the mask, to concentrate on focus above anything else. I started to imitate him as a joke, like [nasal voice] ‘Hi Dennis, how’s it going?!’. He taught me a lot about controlling my soft singing, and always instilled in me that you should never try to be the loudest person in the room – if you can master the squillo to make your voice travel, that’s all you need. I remember him saying ‘Never push the voice: just give it focus and shine’. Dennis has this real Italianate twang to his voice, which is just beautiful to hear. There’s a reason why the Italians awarded him the Verdi Medal: it’s rarely given out, and they presented it to this Welshman! 

You have a pretty broad repertoire, from Mozart’s Mitridate to Romantic lyric roles…

I do, and I love the challenges that it brings. I’m very invested in exploring the nuances that you need to bring to the individual roles and arias – with something like Werther, those can get lost if you’re just chasing that generic ‘lyric tenor’ sound. Sometimes it feels as if everybody just wants to be loud and strong these days…but when I look at what’s on the page, I see a lot of pianissimo in that score, and he must have written that for a reason. 

Has it fallen by the wayside because of the size of the houses we sing in today, or is it just that no-one can do it anymore? You can do these pieces full justice with a nice, nuanced voice. You don’t need to be loud - you just need to be emotionally honest. I think we need to resist getting caught up in the idea of ‘Big Opera’ rather than just being true to ourselves as artists.

I totally get why people long to tackle the big Wagner roles: we get dazzled by all that gold and think ‘Wouldn’t it be great to wave a sword around on stage and sing this stuff?!’ One day it might come, or maybe it won’t – in the meantime, just sing with what you’ve got and be great at it.

I was going to ask what you’d like to be singing in ten years’ time, but it sounds as if that isn’t how you roll…

I’ve never chased specific roles, and I don’t put pressure on myself to be the ‘greatest’ tenor of my generation. I think it’s more important to be a good artist, in every sense of the word - and part of that is knowing when to leave something for another singer. On many occasions when I’ve been offered a great role at a great house, I’ve said ‘Look, I could do this, but there’s someone else who could do it better. And it’s unfair on the piece and on this guy to hire me when he’s right there.’ And the casting-directors have respected it.

I just want to be remembered. That’s all. And if I’m remembered as a guy who made someone in the audience feel something each time I went on stage, that’s more than good enough for me!