Tenor Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono: taking flight to the opera stages of the world

On April 8, the Royal Opera in London announced its Jette Parker Roster for 2025-26. Among the six young singers being offered one of opera’s most coveted international opportunities is New Zealand tenor, Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono, a rising star from our opera scene. He travelled to London to audition at the Royal Opera House in December last year, and has been keeping his success under wraps for several months.

The full-time Jette Parker Programme is both prestigious and highly competitive, and applicants need solid professional experience. From over 600 applicants a much smaller group is invited to audition. The six selected singers will participate in Royal Opera productions and cover (understudy) major roles during their two-year tenure.

Before heading to London, Fonoti-Fuimaono will spend the northern hemisphere summer at another renowned international training event, the Merola Opera Programme. There he will be one of 28 singers who were chosen from a field of 1,300. Former ‘Merolini’, as programme participants are known, include Deborah Voigt, Joyce DiDonato, Thomas Hampson and New Zealanders Simon O’Neill, Pene and Amitai Pati, and Amina Edris.

It was Fonoti-Fuimaono’s teacher, New Zealand-based Japanese-American soprano Nikki-Li Hartliep, a former Merolini herself, who encouraged him to apply for the first time in 2023 and then to return for last year’s successful audition. “It was an awesome moment,” he recalls in our recent interview, “discovering that, with her experience and knowledge, she thought I could do it.”

Tenor Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono

…after successful auditions in San Francisco and London, he’s off to two of the world’s most prestigious opera training programmes

Photo supplied

Fonoti-Fuimaono’s very first opera audition was just over a decade ago and he almost didn’t make it. After turning down his high school teacher’s suggestion that he join his baritone brother Alfred to try out for the Hawke’s Bay youth programme Project Prima Volta, the teenager changed his mind at the last minute and squeezed into the car with his brother and two other friends.

Singing was as natural as breathing to Fonoti-Fuimaono as small child. Music was always part of the household. Emmanuel, the fourth of six children, saw it as an everyday thing. “I sang at church, in family prayer every night; we all chose our harmonies. I thought everybody sang.” Three of his brothers, including Alfred, are also successfully training for operatic careers.

Project Prima Volta, started by mezzo soprano Anna Pierard and her husband José Aparicio, a conductor and musician, works in partnership with Festival Opera, also in Hawkes Bay, to offer opportunities to talented local youth. Professional singers with international careers are brought to New Zealand to sing in the annual opera productions and mentor the young singers.

 “I didn’t really think much more of PPV than an opportunity to hang out with my friends at weekends,” Emmanuel remembers, “until I heard Gary Griffiths sing in a rehearsal for The Marriage of Figaro in 2014”.  The two Fonoti-Fuimaono brothers were in the chorus. Welsh baritone Griffiths, a Guildhall graduate, won the Cardiff Singer of the World in 2013.

It was a turning point. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” says Fonoti-Fuimaono now. “My curiosity had me wondering, ‘what’s he doing to make his voice do that?’. In subsequent years Griffiths returned to New Zealand to sing with Festival Opera and became an important mentor for the young singer.

In recent years New Zealand audiences had many opportunities to become familiar with the beauties of Fonoti-Fuimaono’s tenor voice from our stages. Cast as Gastone in Wellington Opera’s La Traviata, Fonoti-Fuimaono had to step in on opening night with just a few hours’ notice to sing the major role of Alfredo from off stage, when COVID restrictions kept Oliver Sewell at home. Later that year he was Malcolm in NZ Opera’s Macbeth and played the lead role in NZ Opera’s Ihitai Avei’a: Star Navigator. Of the latter, I wrote: “As Tupaia, Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono reveals throughout his glowing, rich tenor voice and compelling, dignified stage presence.”

Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono as Tupaia in New Zealand Opera’s production of Ihitai Avei’a: Star Navigator

with cast members Marlena Devoe, Paul Whelan and Risatisone C Malagamaali

Photo credit: Stephen A’Court

The same year, he won the NZ Lockwood Aria competition and was a finalist in the Lexus Song Quest, where he was awarded the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Award for Potential.

Potential, indeed. His dream run continued into 2023, as did his connection with his early mentors in Hawke’s Bay. He began the year singing the principal male role, the prince Tamino, in Mozart’s The Magic Flute for Festival Opera, and also featured in Wellington Opera’s Lucia de Lammermoor.

Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono as Arturo in Wellington Opera’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor

with Philip Rhodes as Enrico

Photo credit: Roozen + Sibanda

For soprano Madeleine Pierard, a Jette Parker alumna and head of Te Pae Kōkako: The Aotearoa New Zealand Opera Studio at the University of Waikato (TANZOS), Fonoti-Fuimaono’s success is both a vindication of his hard work, and of the TANZOS programme itself. The dream of Dame Malvina, TANZOS was formed to provide post-graduate operatic training to singers that was previously available only by travelling overseas. Fonoti-Fuimaono was in the first cohort of the programme in 2023.

Pierard comments that it was in Fonoti-Fuimaono’s performance in the title role of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, presented by Auckland Choral last year, that she became aware of how much he has matured personally and vocally. “He’s at the top of his game. He’s always been a phenomenal communicator as a singer, and in that performance, he was so present and refined in every moment, I could have been in any hall in the world.”

Fonoti-Fuimaono’s acceptance into that first intake of young singers in 2023 by the new TANZOS programme was a major milestone. Also in the group of six young singers were his partner, soprano Katherine Winitana, and his baritone brother Alfred.

He describes TANZOS as “one of those big cogs that helped shape my trajectory.” The vision of TANZOS, to bring world-renowned operatic artists, teachers and directors to New Zealand to work with the young singers, offered some “mind-blowing” experiences.

“I’ve had to pinch myself,” he laughs. “I’m just a kid from Flaxmere. I’d never left New Zealand; overseas meant the South Island.”  

TANZOS, through Pierard, brought acclaimed British baritone Sir Simon Keenlyside to work with their young singers that year. “My brothers and I, especially the baritone brothers, used to listen to his recordings,” says Fonoti-Fuimaono. When their hero worked with them at TANZOS, Emmanuel and Alfred couldn’t believe it was happening. “Did he just give us a lesson?” they said to each other.

Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono at a TANZOS occasion with Dame Malvina Major, Madeleine Pierard, Katherine Winitana and Katie Trigg

Photo supplied

When asked about key people in his career to date, the young tenor immediately mentions Dame Malvina Major. “She’s been a major part of my journey since I was in Project Prima Volta, looking out for me, guiding me, supporting me throughout.” She in turn is thrilled about the Jette Parker opportunity for him. “Emmanuel’s dedication, perseverance, and artistry have taken him to one of the most prestigious opera houses in the world,” she says.  

2023 became a watershed year for the young tenor. Pierard took the group of TANZOS singers to Australia, to audition at the Sydney Opera House for international opera company representatives from American, Scottish and Australian companies.

“As an opera singer, going into that opera house, not only to watch rehearsals and performances, but being able to sing on that stage…” says Fonoti-Fuimaono “I had goosebumps thinking of all the legends that have crossed that stage. I’m getting shivers just talking about it now - my first trip out of New Zealand and to go straight there.”

The excitement didn’t end with those auditions.  After most of the TANZOS group returned to New Zealand, Fonoti-Fuimaono and Winitana stayed on to compete their first international competition, the Sydney Eisteddfod. Earlier that year they’d shared first place in the inaugural Nicholas Tarling Aria Competition in New Zealand. Fonoti- Fuimaono won the Eisteddfod, and soon afterwards had to return to Sydney for the finals of the IFAC Handa Australian Singing Competition, where he was winner again.  

“It was insane,” he says now. “Katherine and I kept looking at each other, and laughing, and saying, ‘how did this happen?’”

Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono

during his winning performance at the Sydney Eisteddfod in 2023

Photo supplied

Fonoti-Fuimaono’s competition successes probably didn’t prepare him for a disappointment the next year. After his finals place and special award in the 2022 Lexus Song Quest, he entered again in 2024. I was perhaps not the only person in the hall at the semi-finals in Wellington to expect him to proceed to the finals again. Fonoti-Fuimaono admits, with his characteristic humility, that when judge Sumi Jo decided he didn’t make the cut, “it rocked me quite a bit.” He took a couple of weeks to process the event. “It was tough. Then I watched the finals and got over it. I was happy for my colleagues.”

With Merola and the Royal Opera House on his immediate horizon, the world is indeed his oyster right now. When I ask what ultimately matters to him as a singer, he thinks for a while. “I just want to keep sharing this gift,” he says. “Sometimes when I sing, I see some random kid’s jaw drop. I smile on the inside, because I was that kid. I was a really shy, quiet kid and now I’m doing one of the loudest things I can do.” He laughs. “So, if anyone asks, ‘how did you do that?’, I take the time. I want to be generous, I want to share my voice, and share the fact that, though singing’s not an easy career, it’s great and it’s fun.”

Looking ahead, he thinks he’ll always be in some ways a student of singing. “Preparation is a big thing for me. Nikki-Li said to me, and I joke I’m going to tattoo it somewhere, ‘luck is preparation meeting opportunity’. I’ve been using that quite a bit.”

You can read more about Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono, Madeleine Pierard and TANZOS in TANZOS: a springboard for outstanding young opera singers in Aotearoa, New Zealand Opera’s Ihitai ’Avei’a - Star Navigator and Madeleine Pierard: “Sumptuous Singing” At Home and Away