Biography

Tenor Pene Pati was born in 1988 in Samoa. His family, which also included tenor Amitai Pati, emigrated to Auckland, New Zealand, in 1989. In 2011, he went to study in Cardiff, United Kingdom. He then began performing with his brother and a baritone cousin: they formed the trio Sole Mio and recorded an album with great opera arias.

It was also at this time that he met Amina Edris, whom he married a few years later. In 2015, he won second prize and the audience prize in the Operalia competition founded by Plácido Domingo. In 2017, he sang the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto at the San Francisco Opera. The following year, he made his European debut as Percy in Anna Bolena in Bordeaux and sang Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly in Napier, back in New Zealand. Then, it was again in San Francisco, in 2019, that he took on the title role of Roméo et Juliette by Gounod, of which he immediately became a reference interpreter. That year, he was noticed as Alfredo in Traviata at the Bolshoi. In 2021, he made his debut at the Paris Opera as Nemorino in L'Elixir d'amore.

On the evening of the last performance of the production of Roméo et Juliette which marked his debut in Amsterdam, he was called by the Opéra Comique to replace Jean-François Borras in the same role the next day. In 2022, his career took off: in a few months, he made his debut in Naples as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, at the Vienna State Opera in Anna Bolena, in San Diego in Romeo and Juliet, at the Berlin State Opera in Traviata, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées as Nicias in a concert version of Thaïs and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival as Amenophis in Rossini's Moses and Pharaoh. Also in 2022, after returning to Rouen as the Duke of Rigoletto, he sang the title role of La Damnation de Faust for his Monte-Carlo debut and that of Mithridate back in Berlin. He continued his momentum in 2023, taking on the role of Fernand in La Favorite in Bordeaux, that of Rodolfo in La Bohème at the TCE and that of Des Grieux in Massenet's Manon at the Liceu. In 2023/2024, Pene Pati returns to La Bohème for its Toronto debut in October, L'Elixir d'amore for its return to San Francisco in November and Traviata to debut at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in December. In February, he sings Orombello in Bellini's rare Beatrice di Tenda at Bastille. He also makes his Hamburg debut in Manon in May and returns to Berlin, this time at the State Opera, for Rigoletto in June.

Source: olyrix.com