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Faamanu Fonoti-Fuimaono
Voice Type
Baritone
Home Town
Flaxmere, Hastings
Nu'u
Malie/Samatau/Salani (Samoa)
How did you become interested in opera singing?
I first became interested in Opera when I was about 15 years old, i would always hear my older brothers playing opera on their phones, or the TV after they had just joined Project Prima Volta - a youth initiative that empowers young people through Opera. They told me all about how cool it was to be in a professional, fully-staged opera in Festival Opera’s production of Le nozze di Figaro, and so I decided I would follow in their footsteps and give it a go.
After joining Project Prima Volta myself, I performed in my first Opera, La Boheme and have been in love with singing, performing and watching opera ever since.
Performance highlights so far?
Festival Opera productions: La Boheme (2016), Carmen (2017), Madame Butterfly (2018), La Traviata (2019), Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci (2020), The Cunning Little Vixen (2022).
NZO Opera in School’s Tour of Respighi’s The Sleeping Beauty and NZO’s Rigoletto.
What are you looking forward to about being part of TANZOS?
I’m looking forward to being immersed in a constant, high-level teaching and learning environment. I’m also looking forward to trying to maintain the high level of quality that the alumni of TANZOS has been able to maintain in its first two years of running.
The intensity of the daily TANZOS schedule is really beneficial for a young singer trying to improve.
What are your career hopes following TANZOS?
I am hopeful that I will have improved enough throughout my time at TANZOS to impress an audition panel somewhere in Europe - enough to get me a full scholarship at a school in either Europe or the UK, or enough to impress an audition
panel at one of the Opera houses in Europe.
Faamanu is supported by a Te Pae Kōkako Scholarship
Biography
Faamanu is a proud Samoan/Kiwi baritone from Flaxmere, Hastings, who has completed his Honors degree in Classical Vocal Performance at the University of Waikato under the tutelage of Kristin Darragh. He is now studying under Nikki Li Hartliep as a 2025 Te Pae Kōkako TANZOS Artist.
In 2016, Faamanu successfully auditioned for a youth group called Project Prima Volta (PPV) and has since worked both onstage and backstage with Festival Opera through PPV. Faamanu is also a part of an Operatic quartet called ‘Alofa’ made up of himself and his 3 brothers who perform regularly around the country a variety of corporate events.
Faamanu was a recipient of the TAPA scholarship award in 2021 and 2022 and was also a recipient of the prestigious Blues Awards for both those years, which highlights students who excel in the Arts.
Faamanu was selected to take part in the New Zealand Opera School in 2022, 2023, 2024 and has been invited back for 2025.
Faamanu has been involved in many mainstage operas including Festival Opera’s La Traviata (2019), Madama Butterfly (2017), La Boheme (2016), Carmen (2018) and The Cunning Little Vixen (2022), Project Prima Volta’s production of Dido and Aeneas (2016), Simone’ in The University of Waikato’s production of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. Faamanu was also in the ensemble for NZOpera’s production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice or (m)Orpheus. and NZ Opera on stage for their performances of Verdi’s Requiem, Il Trovatore and Die tote Stadt and more recently for Rigoletto and Tristan und Isolde. Faamanu was also involved in NZ Opera's ‘Opera in schools’ tour where they visited 33 schools across the country performing ‘The sleeping beauty’ by Respighi to more than 10,000 students and has been invited back to perform the role of Dulcamara in The Elixir of Love, by Donizetti
for the 2025 schools' tour.