Due to impact of COVID on our touring ensemble this week, we regretfully have to cancel this tour.
Ticketholders will be contacted and a full refund offered.
We share the disappointment of our audiences and supporters as we have been looking forward to touring this show to the South for over a year.
“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.” – W.H. Auden
We are head over heels with opera, wide eyed for Monteverdi and smitten for Britten. VOICES LOVE OPERA is coming to southern stages in Invercargill, Dunedin and Oamaru. Some of New Zealand’s best singers feature in this operatic romp, exploring both the triumphs and the heartbreaks of love. Straight from the opera stages comes this romantic tour-de-force involving Carmen, Madame Butterfly, Lucia de Lammermoor and other operatic favourites.
Wild, surprising, jubilant, funny and sometimes disastrous, this story was created and directed by well-known opera director Jacqueline Coats. Through well-loved arias, duets and choruses, the story is being told by a 16-strong Voices ensemble joined on stage by soloists Morag Atchison (Soprano), Catrin Johnsson (Mezzo Soprano), Andrew Grenon (Tenor), and Chris McRae (Bass) accompanied by Rachel Fuller.
Join us for this uplifting concert and you will recognise the songs from L’Orfeo, Dido and Aeneas, Gloriana, The Tales of Hoffman, Lucia di Lammermoor, Carmen, The Merry Widow, Madame Butterfly and more.
Director Jacqueline Coats
Musical Director Karen Grylls
Soloists
Soprano Morag Atchison
Mezzo Soprano Catrin Johnsson
Tenor Andrew Grenon
Bass Chris McRae
Pianist
Rachel Fuller
Keeping everyone safe
- Our choir and staff are fully vaccinated
- There will be restricted audience numbers in the Red level of the Protection Framework
- Bubbles will be spatially distanced
- Audience will be required to wear masks
- If you have any specific questions around our commitment to keep our choir and audience safe, feel free to email choirs@choirsnz.co.nz
With support from:
Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Conductor Giordano Bellincampi
Soprano Erika Grimaldi
Mezzo-soprano Olesya Petrova
Tenor Gustavo Porta
Bass Petri Lindroos
With
New Zealand Opera Chorus
Members of Voices New Zealand
The Graduate Choir NZ
Chorus Director Karen Grylls
Verdi Requiem
‘Opera in ecclesiastical dress’, sniffed one of Verdi’s contemporaries, completely missing the point. A better assessment from a Verdi biographer: the Requiem is ‘his genius at its most concentrated’.
Having composed 26 operas, once liberated from the requirements of plot and character, Verdi poured into the Requiem everything he knew about music.
Judgement Day, with trumpets calling across the void, was never more terrifying. And the sacred liturgy is clothed in unforgettable melodies.
Verdi’s Requiem calls for a quartet of exceptional soloists, a massive chorus of singers and an orchestra capable of overpowering grandeur.
With support from:
The NZSO closes their 2021 season with a concert of hope, drama and triumph.
Verdi composed the opera Nabucco at a very emotional time in his life. After personal tragedy and the failure of his most recent opera, he resolved to never write another opera. Fortunately, he was persuaded to change his mind and Nabucco, from which the Overture is derived, became the work that established Verdi’s reputation as a composer.
While visiting friends in 1868, Brahms came across a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin. He was so deeply moved by this work he immediately began sketching ideas that would become Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny). Featuring a chorus of singers from Voices New Zealand, Brahms’ Song of Destiny traverses the tranquillity, havoc, drama and mystery of Hölderlin’s original poem.
Compared to Dvořák’s more sombre 7th Symphony, the 8th is often seen as joyful and idyllic, although it is not without its darker moments. From the brooding opening theme in the cellos to the joyful trumpet fanfares of the final movement, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 is a work of great contrasts.
Song of Destiny is performed under Alert Level 2 conditions – capacity is reduced, audiences are required to wear masks throughout the concert and social distancing is in place.
Book tickets to the live concerts
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This event will not be going ahead due to the cancelling of the festival
Moving, uplifting, and thought-provoking. A very special evening of music indeed.
— OTAGO DAILY TIMES
Our moana is living and breathing and Taonga Moana is a love letter to our oceans.
Join us as we present a musical and visual journey that transports you across the seas to explore the vulnerable beauty of our oceans.
Following the great Māori navigator Ui-Te-Rangiora on his quest to save the oceans, Taonga Moana is poetry that begs the question, will you protect the voice of the ocean?
Conducted by Dr Karen Grylls, with elegant direction and choreography by Arts Foundation Laureate Sara Brodie, this spectacular theatrical event features new music from eclectic Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi and New Zealand’s Warren Maxwell.
On this evocative and uplifting journey, travel with our navigator to the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans to encounter whales, turtles and mysterious serpents.
He whakaaturanga toi ataata tēnei e pā ana ki te moana, ki tōna ātaahua, ki tōna tapu, me ōna tini āhuatanga katoa. Ko te ingoa o te whakaaturanga nei ko Taonga Moana, he whakaaturanga e whaiwhai ana i ngā tapuwae o te toki whakatere waka nei, o Hui-Te- Rangiora, ko tāna i whai ai, ko te oranga tonutanga o te moana.
SOLD OUT
Fall in love with the music of this exquisite new vocal ensemble made up of singers from Voices New Zealand.
Our singers will serenade you with music from the ages, romantic to contemporary weaving all matters of the heart into an entertaining evening of song.
Wellington’s brand new vocal ensemble 9Live are heading to the pub! Grab a pint and let some of Wellington’s most accomplished vocalists take you round the world – without leaving your barstool.
Witness the debut of this professional ensemble, singing jazz from Germany, Scandinavian folk, some gorgeous modern works and even taking a trip down ‘Penny Lane’. 9Live is made up of singers from New Zealand’s premier chamber ensemble Voices New Zealand, and with this programme called Encore, you’ll be thirsty for more.
Repertoire
Penny Lane – Lennon-McCartney arr. Bob Chilcott
Rest – Ralph Vaughan Williams
Earth Song – Frank Ticheli
This Marriage – Eric Whitacre
Ave Maris Stella – Edvard Grieg
Underneath the stars – Kate Rusby
Words – Anders Edenroth
Kaipaava – Finnish folk song arr. Essi Wuorela & Jussi Chydenius
Bardinerie – Orchestral suite no. 2 in B minor, J.S Bach arr. Ward Swingle
Lay a Garland – Robert Pearsall
Can’t Buy Me Love – Lennon-McCartney arr. The Kings’ Singers
Ensemble funding from Creative New Zealand
The final gala concert of the New Zealand Choral Federation’s biennial convention Choral Connect, celebrating the choral traditions of Aotearoa. Featuring a stunning line up of award-winning performers: taonga pūoro player Horomona Horo, the New Zealand Secondary Students Choir, Te Kapahaka ō Te Wharekura ō Hoani Waititi Marae and Auckland members of Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir.
You can find out more about the Choral Connect conference here.
“When in doubt, sing loud.”
From playwright Ro Bright and director Kitan Petkovski, the team behind the multi-award-winning Kiwi heartbreaker Daffodils, comes a new uplifting small-town family story performed with the help of a mass choir, with songs composed by Pat Irwin (The B-52s, SUSS).
The Greer household is a battlefield, overflowing with ant armies, wine gums and decades of hoarded fashion. Alison’s universe is centred around caring for her daughter Billie and mother Tup. Surrounded by chaos, Billie discovers a YouTube video that sets the trio on a mission to find a choir big enough to make Tup’s eyes pop.
Premiering at the Festival of Colour in collaboration with Voices Aotearoa NZ and locally-sourced community singers, The Hall brings audiences and choirs together in a ceremonious and frank story about unconditional love.
The Hall from Bullet Heart Club on Vimeo.
With support from
A breathtaking musical and visual homage to the beauty and vulnerability of our oceans.
Celebrating our moana as precious taonga with uplifting music from around the globe, this beautiful concert accompanies the flight of the kuaka/godwit, from icy northern seas all the way down to a fragile sanctuary in Antarctica.
Starting in the north with a new work by eclectic Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi about the Arctic Ocean, we encounter whales, turtles and mysterious serpents on this musical journey following the great Māori navigator Ui-Te-Rangiora on his quest to save the oceans.
Travelling through Latvia, Canada, the US and Indonesia, we arrive at a sanctuary, the majestic Antarctic captured in a new work by New Zealand’s Warren Maxwell, inspired by his own, personal experiences on the ice.
Conducted by Karen Grylls, with elegant direction and choreography by Arts Laureate Sara Brodie, Taonga Moana is set to a stunning landscape of projected moving images.
This spectacular theatrical event is an ode to the power and poetry of oceans – essential, now more than ever, to survival on our planet.
This show comes to us straight from their high-profile performance at Auckland Arts Festival. See them in Wanaka!
“Moving, uplifting, and thought-provoking. A very special evening of music indeed.” – Otago Daily Times
“Impressions…. ranged from full blown despair to total joy and delight.” – The Hook
With support from
