Four Polynesian students say opera is the best thing that's happened to them; Luciano Pavarotti is their idol and the members of rising operatic trio Sol3 Mio are their good mates.
The four young men wonder if maybe they could set themselves up as a quartet called Three Tongans and a Samoanand follow the trail of their successful friends, they laugh.
"Doubt it ... those guys are amazing," they said.
Taunoa (Noah) Filimoehala , 24, a tenor from Otara in South Auckland said opera saved his life. He was adopted into a Tongan family of seven when a baby. His siblings were all adults with children so there were 38 grandchildren, all younger than him. As a teen he was leaning towards the gangs and had his heart set "on being a gangster".
"It was an environment that had a lot of gangs and I thought they were very cool."
His attitude got him expelled from two schools, primary and intermediate. Clover Park School in Otara finally accepted him.
"I had no goals or aspirations."
But two years later, at Tangaroa College in Mangere, he'd reached a turning point.
"I realised I needed a better future, that I was the eldest of 38 grandchildren and I should set an example."
By the fourth form he was on his way, singing in the school choir, playing sport and in the 7th form was elected head boy.
He went on to do a Bachelor of Sports Education at the Auckland University of Technology but it didn't gel, he said.
"I loved the choir, loved singing. Pavarotti was my idol I'd listen to him on You Tube all the time."
So in 2009 he went off to Auckland University and auditioned to study for a Bachelor of Music, majoring in voice performance. "I was turned down. They told me to go and have some lessons first and come back."
After 15 singing lessons he returned and was accepted.
"And this all I want to do ... sing."
His cousin Kalauni Pouvalu, 21, a tenor also from South Auckland said he wasn't into singing as a boy, although he did sing in church every week.
"I was into bands. I played the trombone and a few other instruments. I didn't really sing until I found out that singing was a subject in NCEA."
Even though he's happy studying music at Auckland University, his dream was to become a pilot. "But my eyesight wasn't good enough so I suppose singing was my choice."
He remembers as a small boy his parents playing LPs of classical music and great singers on an old gramophone and telling him to "sing like that".
"So I grew up listening to all the great music and voices and now I'm happy and very proud to be singing opera."
For tenor Phillip Akau, 20, it's his second year at the Wanganui New Zealand Opera School.
He is the youngest in a family of four boys with a solo mother.
It was at Dilworth School, the Auckland boarding school for boys from disadvantaged families, that he was introduced to classical music by music master Ian Campbell, assistant director of the NZ Opera School.
He has loved singing since; first in the choir then on to one-on-one vocal tuition.
Now into the third year of his music degree, Akau switched last year from Auckland University to Waikato University to train with Dame Malvina Major.
"I really enjoyed it. I look forward to more and more opera performance."
Samoan bass baritone Joel Amosa, 23, was also at Dilworth School. He remembers as a little boy singing in church at Otara every Sunday.
"Our family were all very musical," he recalls, adding music has always been part of his life.
He has just completed his music degree at Otago University and found it "really frightening" coming to the opera school for the first time.
"On the first day after we'd just arrived we all had to sing an aria onstage ... I was terrified."