The Samoan Pene Pati is a sumptuously voiced tenor. He boasts a quintessentially lyrical sound, timbered as if made for virtually anything out of the great Romantics’ operatic pen. In “Nessun Dorma,” he once again proves his qualities:

After his 2022 debut on Warner Classics, he takes on a heavily eclectic repertory which he navigates with remarkably executed showpiece notes, and an unerring feel for both language and style.

Vocal Fireworks

The album opens with the title-giving “Nessun Dorma” which by making it into the 1990 UK Singles Chart, has become the unofficial operatic anthem per se. It is a bit of a concession to consumer expectations that Pati would give it such prominence; after all, even brightly colored tenors like Juan Diego Flórez have recently taken to the Puccinian war horse. Yet it is not where Pene Pati’s wonderfully clear voice excels the most. Though his unfailingly reliable breath enables him to manage the score’s uneasy tessitura, and even cut through the orchestral texture with apparent ease, one cannot help thinking that his forte really lies someplace else. In Gounod, Massenet, Donizetti, and – to some extent – Verdi he comes into his own.

Surprisingly perhaps, he adapts to the French style and diction seamlessly. The color of the vowels changes accordingly, and the phrasing has all the rhythmic sprezzatura of the repertoire’s most prominent interpreters. In “Salut! Demeure chaste et pure” he additionally treats us to a near-impossible diminuendo on the often dreaded C executed, so to speak, en passant. For Massenet’s “Manon” and “Werther” the prevailing expression becomes both dreamy and hauntingly tortured – yet without overstepping the boundaries of unprescribed decorum.

Dom Sébastien’s “Seul sur la terre” is a triumphantly rendered tour de force for which he departs from the syllabic preponderance of the French operatic tradition to a typically Belcantist legato. The aria has received something of a discographic revival, as it noticeably featured on recent studio recordings by Benjamin Bernheim (“Boulevard des Italiens,” 2022), Michael Spyres (“Espoir,” 2017), and Lawrence Brownlee (“Allegro io son,” 2016). Pati manages a fully supported top D-flat, garnishing the Donizetti piece with radiating clarion sounds. Criticism, if pertinent at all, would solely touch on his handling of the melismas which here and in “Tombe degli avi miei,” lack the bite of similarly placed tenor voices, incl. Pavarotti’s.

A Family Affair

Pati is aptly supported by his wife Amina Edris and brother Amitai Pati whose faultless performances significantly contribute to the album’s lasting appeal. Edris invests the part of Mascagni’s Suzel with extraordinary tenderness, if not frailty; yet her soprano’s metallic ring also points to interpretive avenues well beyond the type-cast soubrette in turn-of-the century opera. Similarly, Amitai Pati is a generously equipped tenor whose warm timbre effortlessly matches his brother’s Macduff and, in Halévy’s “La Juive,” the fatherly Éléazar.

The trio is sensibly supported by the unpretentious conducting of Emmanuel Villaume. He does not seek to be adventurous, or to depart from the repertory’s well-trodden paths in any shape or form. Instead, his Orchestre National leaves enough breathing room for the protagonist’s exceptionally rounded voice to unfold – and in the process establish itself among the standard bearers of a new generation.