Simon O’Neill stopped by his home town this week while on the Simon O’Neill in Concert tour. Photo Susan SandysAs a child Simon O’Neill played rugby and would not have been caught dead singing. But his doctor’s advice to improve his lung capacity set him on a new path. Susan Sandys reports.

Opera star Simon O’Neill was back where it all began this week, at his home in Ashburton.

The 47-year-old tenor had an almost sell-out crowd in awe at the Ashburton Trust Event Centre on Thursday night, as the venue reverberated with his powerful voice, bringing classics to life such as selections from Pearl Fishers, Madama Butterfly, Don Carlo, Otello and Tosca, and one of the best-known arias of all time, Nessun Dorma.

O’Neill was in his element, doing something he wishes he had of done more of in recent times – performing in front of a home crowd, including his old school friends, family and many acquaintances from his years growing up.

Simon O’Neill in Concert is on tour throughout New Zealand and Ashburton was the premier event, representing the first time he has performed in the town for about four years.

O’Neill’s path to becoming an opera star started when he was just nine, when he visited the doctor for asthma.

Dr Munns told his mother Gabrielle that her son should swim and take up a wind instrument.

He soon joined the Ashburton Silver Band, learning the baritone and euphonium.

It instilled in him a love of music and he also took up piano. His parents always thought he had a good boy soprano voice, but he generally shied away from performances.

“I played rugby, I wouldn’t have been caught dead singing,” he said.

He started to get over that as he got into high school at Ashburton College. While in the First XV and a cricketer and basketball player, he became a keen participant in musicals written and directed by music teacher Gordon McGee and English teacher Roderick Lonsdale.

Teacher Robert Aburn soon came on board to lead the music department.

Aburn had a great influence on O’Neill, inspiring him in his singing. At the age of about 15 he joined the Phoenix Choir and an acapella group called Steve and the Fat Boys.

In 1989 he auditioned for the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir and got in, all of a sudden finding himself among the best young singers from high schools throughout New Zealand.

“It put me into a new echelon of music making, particularly singing.”

Music was always going to be his career path, but he had intended to follow in his mother’s footsteps, and those of his “heroes”  Aburn and McGee, and become a teacher.

“I had no idea I would be travelling the world singing in all these places, my dream was to be a high school music teacher.”

He aimed to study classical singing at the University of Otago or the University of Canterbury, but he did not get in on auditions.

One of the panel he was auditioning in front of at Otago was renowned pianist Terrence Dennis, who is now accompanying O’Neill for the Kiwi concert tour, alongside fellow famous opera star Ian Paterson.

“Now we perform all around the world together,” O’Neill said of Dennis.

“And I always remind him how he didn’t take me into singing in 1990, and he laughs.”

But O’Neill has no hard feelings on the matter.

“I’m sure I did a very, very poor audition,” he said.

He decided to study music instead, but was able to change to singing as his major in the second year.

He worked his way through Otago with holiday jobs in Ashburton at the local freezing works, where he would sing along as he worked on the chain.

Developing his opera voice became his main goal, as he revelled in compositions from the greats such as Handel and Mozart.

O’Neill went on to complete an honours degree at Victoria University in Wellington, where he worked as a singing waiter at a restaurant in the capital.

He would get $50 extra each night for adding his vocals to the hospitality role.

In 1995 he was invited to sing at Auckland Opera in the Park, a performance which put him on the opera industry radar.

Before tens of thousands of people he stunned crowds alongside Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and his parents were there.

“It was magic,” recalls Gabrielle today.

The same year New Zealand Post featured him on the $1 stamp and O’Neill’s proud dad Brian bought 100 of them and had them framed.

Shortly after O’Neill won a Fullbright scholarship and went to New York to train at the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School of Music.

He grew to love the city and was devastated on 9/11, when he watched from a nearby high-rise building as the twin towers crumbled to the ground.

Classes were cancelled that day, but the next day he went to a singing lesson with a Juilliard teacher, despite the smell of burning drifting up throughout Manhattan.

“We couldn’t really concentrate, but we did it anyway.”

He was in young artists’ programmes and performed in small opera companies, before getting his big break in 2004.

After an audition at the Metropolitan Opera in New York he became the understudy to Placido Domingo.

“From then my life just took off, I have been so grateful for my whole life with music.”

O’Neill is now based in Auckland and tours around the world, entertaining audiences of thousands, including royalty and celebrities, in some of the most magnificent opera houses and theatres.

Renowned internationally as the Wagnerian tenor of his generation, he is a vehicle for the magic of opera, an art form which has the power to move hearts and souls, if not heaven and earth.

But it is not applause or plaudits which inspire O’Neill, rather it is getting his performance right every time.

“It’s just about the music for me.

“It moves me and I love it to move the listener as well,” he said.

© The Ashburton Guardian - 6 July 2019