The Flaxmere tenor following his dreams in Florence
Young Hawke's Bay tenor Taylor Wallbank will soon be following in the footsteps of his operatic heroes.
This month, Taylor Wallbank embarks on a two-year stint in Florence, Italy, for a programme in opera studies and performance at Opera Mascarade.
He likes his opera old school, he told RNZ’s Concert.
“The greats for me are the old Italian bel canto singers, Carlo Bergonzi, Luciano Pavarotti obviously, Lauri-Volpi, all these amazing tenors, even sopranos as well, like Maria Callas and those guys, for me are the golden age and something I aspire to emulate.
Hawke's Bay tenor Taylor Wallbank is off the Florence to take part in the Opera Mascarade programme.
Supplied / Taylor Wallbank
“And I think in Florence, being one of the birthplaces of opera, it's for me incredibly humbling and inspiring to be in that same city where a lot of those people actually did their training.”
Opera Mascarade is a training programme for talented young singers, mixing the Florence-based study of the craft with work in opera houses around Italy and Europe.
And it’s not easy to get in, he says.
“First you had the pre-screening, you send in your arias, and then they invite you over for the live audition, and there were about 20 artists from around the world who got invited to this live audition.”
Those 20 then compete for five finals placements, he says.
“I got a bit of insider info as well when I was there, and they had over 800 applications sent in.”
Wallbank is another of the seemingly endless stream of talented singers to come out of the Hastings suburb of Flaxmere, whose talent was first nourished by Hawke's Bay music programme Project Prima Volta (PPV).
Others include the Fonoti-Fuimaono brothers: baritones Fa'amanu and Alfred, and tenors Jordan and Emmanuel.
Hearing bass baritone Joel Amosa sing at his school, Hastings Boys High, inspired him to get involved in PPV, he says.
“That was my first time hearing opera, for me, that was a sound that I wanted to make as well.”
Wallbank says he struggled at school as teenager, although he found a positive outlet in sport through rugby and boxing, Flaxmere was a pretty tough environment to grow up in.
“It used to have the highest crime rate in New Zealand at one point. And obviously, I grew up around a lot of the gangs that were in that area. It didn't affect me, but it definitely wasn't the environment that fostered classical music.”
Nevertheless, there was something in classical music that resonated with him, he says.
“It was something for me that was different. It gave me an outlet. It was something to show emotion that was different for me that I'd never been able to express.”
The collegial nature of opera also appealed to him, he says.
“I've always enjoyed that part of it. I've loved opera because when I first started, it was hearing other people.
“I didn't necessarily worry too much or care too much whether I was singing well, to be honest. It was always about getting the chance to be in an environment where everyone else is doing the same thing, like-minded individuals, that was the goal as well, to be around those types of people who were striving for higher things.”
A year ago, Wallbank graduated with a Master of Music in Advanced Opera Studies from The Aotearoa New Zealand Opera School (TANZOS) at Waikato University.
And soon he'll be following in the footsteps of some of his Italian heroes onto the opera stages of Europe.
