Acclaimed by critics, the 34-year-old singer, who makes his debut at the prestigious Aix-en-Provence festival on Thursday in Rossini's opera "Moses and Pharaoh", is also a pioneer of a generation of opera singers from this independent republic.

At each performance, the press draws a parallel with an opera legend.

"Since 2017, almost all the critics have said the same thing: + Your voice resembles that of Pavarotti +", told AFP the tenor with the solar and powerful voice.

Choir and rugby

Born in the archipelago but having grown up in New Zealand, in Auckland, he had also begun his lyrical apprenticeship with the Italian star … on YouTube.

"I couldn't afford singing lessons," he recalls.

In his car, he watched videos of the "people's tenor" and watched, zooming in on his face, how he managed to control the "passagio", this difficult transition between vocal registers.

Samoan tenor Pene Pati, who is making his debut at the Aix-en-Provence Lyric Art Festival, poses during a photo shoot in Aix-en-Provence on June 22, 2022. Nicolas TUCAT AFP

At school, he falls in love with singing thanks to an ingenious idea from the teacher.

"To be able to play rugby, you had to sing in the choir... And it worked!", he exclaims.

Pene Pati, who has just released his first solo album on Warner Classics, assures us that his Samoan culture also has something to do with it.

"Music is in our DNA: we sing for everything, our myths, our legends, our independence. (...) It's a bit like opera, we sing a story," says Pene Pati.

At the University of Auckland, thinking to protect him, his professors warn him that few opera singers from the Pacific have broken through internationally, with the exception of the New Zealand soprano of Maori origin Kiri Te Kanawa.

"I remember saying, 'I'll be the first, I'll prove you wrong,'" he said.

"The real bel canto"

With his younger brother Amitai, a tenor who is also making a name for himself, and the Samoan baritone Moses Mackay, he founded the trio "SOL3 MIO", whose debut album was the best-selling in New Zealand in 2014 and 2015.

He won the "New Zealand Aria" competition, that of Montserrat Caballé or the public prize of "Operalia", a competition created by Placido Domingo.

He perfected his technique in Cardiff with the tenor Dennis O'Neill then obtained a scholarship from the San Francisco Opera where he landed his first major role, that of the Duke of Mantua in "Rigoletto" by Verdi.

It was there that he was noticed in 2017 by Marc Minkowski, then director of the Bordeaux Opera who launched: "I want to bring him back to France!".

"He told me that I had a voice that we lost a little, that it was the real bel canto", remembers this lyrical tenor (voice lighter than the dramatic tenor).

Since his European debut in Bordeaux, he has chained roles, sometimes in extreme circumstances.

Last December, while he was singing in Amsterdam, the Opéra comique in Paris asked him to jump on a train to replace at short notice the next evening a singer in "Romeo and Juliet".

"They had forgotten to tell me that it was a premiere party!" Laughs the singer who had a triumphant welcome.

"It takes courage and people appreciate that."

The tenor plans to move to Barcelona with his wife, Egyptian-born soprano Amina Edris, but keeps his native land in mind.

“In the Pacific there are a huge number of people who are starting to taste opera and young Samoan singers who are now singing at the Metropolitan Opera and in the islands they have decided to build an opera house” , he points out.

His big dream is to create a singing school there.

"I hope that the future generation will achieve a lot more things than me," he says.

© 2022 AFP