Give us a tenor

By WILLIAM DART


Simon O'Neill is frank, disarmingly so. The 32-year-old tenor heartily confesses he bought his domain name (simononeill.com) for only $15 and admits that his traumatic withdrawal from Canterbury Opera's La Boheme in the 90s was a turning point in his career, prompting him to pursue studies in the United States and establish himself as a young singer to watch out for in the Heldentor (heroic tenor) stakes.

O'Neill is back in Auckland rehearsing for tonight's Verdi concert with the Auckland Philharmonia and for next week's production of Mozart's Idomeneo.

Not long after the final curtain falls on Idomeneo, he will return to New York to understudy Placido Domingo as Siegmund in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Die Walkure.

"I'm the first of three understudies," O'Neill says, "so I do all the rehearsals up to the runs. I sleep with the score and study with Don McIntyre, who screams at me that my German isn't up to it."

McIntyre, New Zealand's most celebrated bass, always an idol, became a mentor after O'Neill "called him out of the blue and said, 'I'd love to come out to your farm and sing for you'."

O'Neill says of his pushy factor: "I've always been a bit that way. Ever since I was a kid I've had this very American confidence. Over there it's normal to put your hand up."

Call it pushy, call it New Zealand pluck and indomitability, but O'Neill is chalking up some major roles in the United States. Critics and composers have been taking notice.

"When I played Judge Danforth in Toledo Opera's production of Robert Ward's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Crucible, the composer took me aside and told me he wrote this role for my voice."

Next year he will be Chairman Mao in Minnesota Opera's production of Nixon in China.

And in London, he will be Jenik in Covent Garden's The Bartered Bride. This came about through a last-minute audition. "I'd just come off an international flight, turned up, and was asked to sing Parsifal and Lohengrin. I apologised for not bringing my spear, as both of them are typical German hero-type roles with spear and sword."

O'Neill appreciates the fact that McIntyre has sung with "all the big Heldentenors and they are all so different. The way Jon Vickers sings Siegmund is very different to the way James King does it. Vickers is sotto voce, King is more sung through, and that's the way I want to do it".

O'Neill knows his operas so well because he plays them as well as sings them, a skill which can come in handy at auditions.

"I play many auditions myself and whenever I play I get the gig. I simply ask them what bit they want to hear and then I sing it."

Tonight, O'Neill heads the cast of the Auckland Philharmonia's Verdi concert, following the success of the orchestra's 2003 Puccini spectacular. We will hear him as Radames and Otello, roles that are still a few years off on the opera stage, although opportunities like tonight give him a valuable chance to "start absorbing".

A team player, he enthuses about the ensembles on the programme. "The Trio from Ernani and the first act scena from Otello that I'll be doing with Patricia Wright are phenomenal - and they're not just people singing in thirds."

O'Neill is also taken with the mix of the familiar and less familiar. "We're not doing only hit tunes. While you'll be getting one or two numbers people know from spaghetti adverts, the bulk of it is the sort of Verdi that would be difficult to put on in this country - Aroldo, Ernani, Otello."

So, if NBR New Zealand Opera's Rigoletto whetted your appetite for some more Verdi, tonight's concert will fit the bill.


Performance

* Who: Simon O'Neill and Opera in Concert, with the Auckland Philharmonia

* Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, tonight, 7.30