Pene Pati

Tenor Pene Pati has been hailed as a major vocal discovery. Graduating from a pair of prestigious training programs in San Francisco, he began appearing at major opera houses internationally in the mid-2010s.
Pati was born in the Samoan capital of Apia. His birth name was Darren Pati, but he was called Pene Pati Jr. after his father, an enthusiastic backyard singer and guitarist. Pati’s family moved to New Zealand when Pati was two. Opera was unknown among South Pacific islanders, but singing was very much a part of his culture; tales of Samoan life were sometimes passed down through song rather than writing or speech. When offered the chance to join his school choir, Pati jumped at the chance, thinking that he had already been singing for his entire life. He went on to sing in community choirs, the New Zealand National Choir, and a choir at Auckland University, where he was planning to study science at first. Urged to study classical singing, he agreed. At the time, he knew almost nothing about opera, not even the names of Verdi and Puccini, but he hoped to introduce the art form to Pacific Islanders. As he became more immersed in his studies, he grew more and more fascinated. In 2013, he was heard on an album with the Graduate Choir of New Zealand, A Sound Came from Heaven. From Auckland, Pati went on for further studies at the Wales International Academy of Voice in Cardiff, U.K. He won the Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Bel Canto Award in 2012, first prize at the Montserrat Caballé International Aria Competition in 2014, and both second prize and the audience prize at Operalia in 2015.
Pati rounded out his education in the U.S., winning admission to two prestigious San Francisco training programs, the Merola Opera Program in 2013 and the San Francisco Opera’s Adler Fellowship in 2016-2017. The latter led to a breakthrough in 2017 as Pati made his debut with the San Francisco Opera as Il Duca di Mantova in Verdi’s Rigoletto. Since then, he has frequently appeared with that company and many others, and he has begun to gain wide attention in Europe as well as North America. Key early European appearances came as Percy in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at France’s Opéra national de Bordeaux in the 2018-2019 season and as Alfredo in Verdi’s La traviata at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Staatsoper in Berlin. In 2017, Pati took a step toward wider public awareness by singing the U.S. National Anthem at a San Francisco Giants/New York Mets baseball game. Personable and with an enthusiasm for the art form of opera that has attracted audiences beyond the usual, Pati was signed to the Warner Classics label and released his debut album, Pene Pati, in 2022. ~ James Manheim