AIX-EN-PROVENCE (FRANCE): Pene Pati remembers his teachers at university telling him: “Don’t be ashamed if you don’t make it because a lot of Pacific singers won’t.” In fact, they added, no one from Samoa had ever become an opera star.
Pati’s reaction? “Well, I’ll be the first and I’ll prove you wrong.”
Now, at 34, he has released his first album on Warner Classics, and is about to star in Rossini’s “Moise et Pharaon” at the prestigious Aix-en-Provence festival, after already wowing audiences from Bordeaux to San Francisco.
There is one comparison that keeps coming up — and not just because of his commanding physical…