Review: Opera In The Pa

Deborah Wai Kapohe at Opera in the Pa.

Thirty-one days out from the centenary of the Gallipoli landing, Rotorua's had a foretaste of the ceremonies that are to come marking that most significant of dates in New Zealand's nationhood.

It wasn't at a cenotaph or in a war cemetery but at Te Puia's Rotowhio Marae where Opera in the Pa 2015 was staged specifically as a tribute to World War I's Pioneer Maori Battalion with a wee tilt at the Maori Battalion which fought so valiantly in the second.

How better to salute their bravery and that of all Anzacs than with five fine operatic voices raised in homage.

As the Rev Tom Poata said in his opening karakia (prayer), "We give thanks to those who tonight lift their voices to the heavens"; lift them these versatile performers did.

The programme was a finely-tuned balancing act between the wartime tributes (the Last Post included) and a repertoire of Rossini, Wagner, Handel and Bizet's better known arias.

For anyone who thinks the Northern Hemisphere's snared the best of the best performers think again. In soprano Deborah Wai Kapohe, baritone Benson Wilson, mezzo soprano Elisha Fai Hulton, tenor Bonaventure (Bonnie) Allan-Moetaua and counter tenor Stephen Diaz, this country has an ensemble well on the way to international acclaim. Diaz's vocal range is a rare commodity, reaching way, way up into the upper register.

Robert Wiremu's musical directorship is well-known to Opera in the Pa regulars; this year he added a number of his own arrangements sung in te reo Maori.

What would Opera in the Pa be without the laid-back Max Cryer as MC? But who knew he could sing too? His surprise delivery of Where Are The Men of New Zealand Tonight? released in October 1914 as, to quote, "our boys went off to open up the Dardanelles" may not have been grand opera but it was grand just the same.

Fittingly, he chose Te Puia to perform it in the lead-up to the audience laying poppies on a post, carved to commemorate the war ironically meant to end all wars.