Tenor Jordan Fonoti-Fuimaono at the 2025 New Zealand Opera School in Whanganui. Photo: Supplied
Imagine a family blessed with so much singing talent it could form its own opera company.
The remarkable Fonoti-Fuimaono clan can dare to dream of the possibility.
Three of the Fonoti-Fuimaono brothers, tenor Emmanuel, and baritones Fa'amanu and Alfred have already established themselves on the New Zealand opera scene.
Now they've been joined by a fourth, tenor Jordan, who is this year's winner of the Dame Malvina Major Foundation Scholarship, worth $7,500.
Jordan Fonoti-Fuimaono won the scholarship at this summer's New Zealand Opera School in Whanganui.
Tenor Jordan Fonoti-Fuimaono and participants of the 2025 New Zealand Opera School in Whanganui. Photo: Supplied
RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump spoke with Jordan during a break in his latest opera gig, being part of this year's Hawkes Bay Festival Opera double bill of Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi" and Purcell's "Dido & Aeneas".
He told Crump all five of his siblings are musical (he has another bass-singing brother and a soprano sister), along with his mother and father.
Jordan Fonoti-Fuimaono credits the influence of church singing as a big part of his family's musicality, but says his mother was also trombone player in a marching band.
He says singing together comes naturally to the Kiwi-Samoan family which lives in the Hastings suburb of Flaxmere, and the brothers have discussed putting on an opera together (only half-jokingly) - perhaps Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor".
