Pene Pati is the first Samoan tenor to perform regularly at the great European opera houses. His musical versatility ensures he is equally at ease in roles by Mozart, Donizetti and Massenet, and in operas by Gounod, Verdi and Puccini.
Highlights of the 2024/25 season include(d) his debut as Gounod’s Faust at the Paris Opéra, his house debut as Duke of Mantua (Rigoletto) at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Rodolfo (La bohème) at the Bavarian State Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and his debut as Werther in concert performances of Massenet’s opera with the Orchestre de Chambre de Génève. Gala concerts and song recitals took him throughout Europe, and included his first appearance at the Salzburg Easter Festival in Mendelssohn’s Elijah.
In recent seasons Pene Pati has made many acclaimed debuts, with appearances including Nemorino (L’elisir d’amore) at the Paris Opéra and the San Francisco Opera, Roméo (Roméo et Juliette) at the Opéra Comique, the Opéra National de Bordeaux and in San Francisco, Des Grieux (Manon) at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and the Hamburg State Opera, Faust (La Damnation de Faust) at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Rodolfo at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and with the Canadian Opera Company, Percy (Anna Bolena) at the Vienna State Opera and the title roles of Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto at the Berlin State Opera and La clemenza di Tito at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
Pene Pati is an exclusive artist with Warner Classics. His debut album Pene Pati, released in 2022 with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine under Emmanuel Villaume, is of arias by Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Gounod and Benjamin Godard. He released his second album, Nessun Dorma, in September 2024.
Pene Pati was born in Samoa and grew up in New Zealand. He studied singing at the Wales International Academy of Voice in Cardiff, and is an Adler Fellow of the San Francisco Opera Center and a prize-winner of numerous major competitions, among them Plácido Domingo’s Operalia and the international vocal competition Neue Stimmen.
