Michael Vinten (right) with La bohème conductor Dionysis Grammenos, Christchurch, June 2025 Photo: NZ Opera
Michael Vinten has been appointed NZ Opera's first Chorusmaster Laureate.
This special role acknowledges his long-standing involvement with the company and the wider Aotearoa New Zealand opera community.
RNZ Concert's David Morriss caught up with Michael Vinten to talk about what the role of a chorusmaster involves, and asked him to pick three of his favourite opera choruses.
Wagner, Richard: Wach auf! es nahet gen den Tag, from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
"Die Meistersinger probably marks the start of my professional career as a chorusmaster. I was brought onboard for the 1990 New Zealand Arts Festival production at Michael Fowler Centre, and they needed somebody to basically control all the choral forces - we had a chorus of nearly 100, I think, for that."
"But I'll never forget a sunny, hot afternoon around at Oriental Bay, where we performed that chorus [Wach auf!] as a publicity thing - we performed it outdoors... I'll always remember that, it was beautiful."
Puccini, Giacomo: Gira la cote, from Turandot
"I'm a great Puccini afficionado, and I would've chosen something from La bohème, but there is no substantive chorus music in La bohème."
"But you can't go past Turandot. This chorus, by the way, is probably the longest single concentrated chorus in the whole of the Puccini repertoire... It's like a 10-minute sequence, which is just the chorus... extraordinary for Puccini."
Verdi, Giuseppe: Va pensiero, from Nabucco
"It is, I think, the greatest opera chorus. It does everything you want from an opera chorus: it's so satisfying to sing, it has all the right emotional content that you want from an opera chorus - it goes from subtlety to blazing harmony - it's just the perfect opera chorus."
"And it's actually the opera chorus that I've probably conducted the most. The [NZ Opera] choruses all know it so well, and we've done it on grand occasions, we've done it for funerals, we've done it for anything you can imagine. It's stock repertoire, standard repertoire, but it's always special when you get to it. I think singers always feel that, and I certainly always feel that when I'm up conducting it. This is a great, great piece."
