Counter tenor Stephen Dias will teach a singing master class in Whanganui with soprano Deborah Wai Kapohe. Photo / Charles Brooks
Counter tenor Stephen Dias will teach a singing master class in Whanganui with soprano Deborah Wai Kapohe. Photo / Charles Brooks
Acclaimed singers, soprano Deborah Wai Kapohe and counter tenor Stephen Diaz, will host a free masterclass in Whanganui for singers of all kinds and music lovers.
The master class, presented by the Sarjeant Gallery with the support of Murray and Denise Lazelle, is at 10am to noon on Monday, December 4, at the Royal Whanganui Opera House.
Trained in the Italian vocal technique of singing, the duo will teach pre-arranged volunteers how to fill a large auditorium space with their natural voice - microphones not required.
The master class will follow what promises to be a magical concert, Ngā Tai Huri Huri, on Sunday, December 3, in which Wai Kapohe and Diaz will sing Act III of Orfeo, one of the most adored and recognisable arias, in Italian. Anyone who attends the master class should make sure they go to the main event the night before to see the performers in full flight.
“You’re actually filling an auditorium with your voice without it being magnified at all,” Wai Kapohe said.
“Singing Orfeo in the concert ties together the fact that we’re acoustic performers from the same vocal lineage, so this will also show students how to sing in this way.”
The concert brings together operatic aria, karanga, big energy percussion, classical piano, taonga puoro and visual art. A selection of musical pieces leads up to the exciting finale of Gareth Farr’s original composition, the dramatic Ngā Tai Huri Huri.
Wai Kapohe, well-known to Whanganui audiences, has performed in operas, musical theatre, contemporary Māori music, arts festivals and events throughout New Zealand and Australia, as well as in the UK, Asia Pacific and South Africa. Her singing career now includes teaching part-time at two Christchurch colleges, Rangi Ruru Girls’ School and St Andrew’s College.
She said she and Diaz were keen to share the centuries-old Italian singing technique that allows singers to sing well into their 70s and 80s. They will teach a particular type of posture and breathing, among other techniques.
“We come from a value system where it’s not so much about the volume but about the quality of the sound. The Italians experimented for hundreds of years how to breathe in a way that would achieve a particular sound. They worked out that they could use what’s called intercostal diaphragmatic breathing, which is basically the way we breathe when we’re babies. We breathe deeply. We breathe with the ribs going out, the back going out. You know, it’s really a full, low breath and produces a stunning sound.”
The Italian style, which was documented and taught by the great master Manuel Garcia and his descendants, is still very popular and is the base for modern musical theatre “with other tweaks to the sound.”
However, Wai Kapohe said the Italian style was just one among many that suited different singing genres.
They will also teach techniques to produce more volume to suit the larger, louder modern orchestras.
Wai Kapohe and Diaz’s teaching approach in the master class would be organic and easily shared by two tutors who had a good rapport, she said.
“It happens on the spot and some issues are better addressed by one or the other. Because I’ve been teaching for two years now and I’m a singer, I know what I’m looking for. Someone can walk in and give me one note, or sometimes they don’t even have to give me a note, and I know what’s about to happen. You can tell by the way someone stands and by the way they breathe.”
Diaz is a South Africa-born, New Zealand-raised counter tenor who began his international career in 2017 and is now based in Spain. Along with Wai Kapohe, he has attended the NZ Opera School several times over recent years.
He said there was renewed interest in counter tenor singing, which was pitched at a higher vocal range. There were more counter tenor parts and roles in earlier religious and Baroque music but since Alfred Deller (1912-1979), dubbed the “godfather of the countertenor”, popularised the return of the counter tenor, more are being written.
Diaz began singing in the children’s church choir and joined the adults’ choir while still a youngster. Sitting next to his mother, he thinks he continued to sing high by mimicking the women’s voices.
In New Zealand, he joined the Auckland Youth Choir and went on to study music at the University of Auckland and the NZ Opera School.
He trains his voice across the full range, “just so that my body knows what’s there”, and thinks he could also be a baritone; however, he always sings in his countertenor range.
“It is [about] the positioning and conditioning of the vocal chords so that the air escapes in a way that makes a certain sound. Difference in pitch is a different vibration in the air and in the vocal chords. It’s just another way, another conditioning of the body, another conditioning of the vocal chords.”
He will teach as required “inspired by what the student offers rather than [imposing] the knowledge that I have. Whatever you’re trying to do, we need to look for the easy, free, liberated way of achieving it.”
Event details
Master class: Monday, December 4, 10am sharp until noon on the stage of the Royal Whanganui Opera House. Enter via the front doors.
Ngā Tai Huri Huri is a one-time-only performance by Deborah Wai Kapohe, Stephen Diaz, Mone Isolde, Jasmin Ratana and the Whanganui brass percussionists featuring the dramatic Gareth Farr composition about changing tides and seasons; new becoming old. Tickets are available from the Whanganui isite, the Opera House ticket office or iTicket.co.nz
