NZSO performs Stabat Mater compositions by Rossini and Victoria Kelly

John Daly-Peoples

Stabat Mater

Gioachino Rossini and Victoria Kelly

Michael Fowler Centre, October 2

Auckland Town Hall, October 3

John Daly-Peoples

Opera giant Gioachino Rossini’s breathtaking Stabat Mater will be performed for the first time in nearly 40 years by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Wellington and Auckland—alongside a world premiere. Of a new 21^st-century Stabat Mater by New Zealand composer and musician Victoria Kelly.

Rossini’s dramatic hour-long choral work was inspired by the 13^th-century ‘Stabat Mater’ liturgy, written by a priest, described Mary’s suffering at the crucifixion of her son, Jesus.

Kelly’s Stabat Mater, commissioned by the NZSO, is a response to Rossini’s interpretation and a contemporary appraisal of Mary, motherhood and women.

To create this unforgettable operatic experience, Rossini’s Stabat Mater features three extraordinary New Zealand singers: soprano Madison Nonoa, mezzo-soprano anna Pierard and tenor Filipe Manu. Talented Australian bass-baritone Jeremy Kleeman has replaced Teddy Tahu-Rhodes, who had to withdraw.

The singers are joined by the internationally lauded Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, which also perform during Kelly’s new work.

For both concerts, the NZSO will be led by renowned Italian conductor Valentina Peleggi, making her New Zealand debut. Peleggi, who won acclaim for elevating the profile of the Richmond Symphony in the US since becoming its Music Director 2020, conducts many leading orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic. She is highly regarded for her direction of bel canto opera. Concerto.com declared: “Peleggi has Rossini in her blood.”

Peleggi’s 2024 debut at Seattle Opera with Rossini’s The Barber of Seville was enormously successful, as was her Paris debut this year for Rossini’s Semiramide at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, where she was praised for “navigating Rossini’s characteristic crescendos with both power and accuracy.”

Her family history has special link to opera. Very early in the last century, her great-grandmother, then a teenager, worked up the courage to audition for a new opera called “La Bohème.” Puccini himself had come to Rome to choose the singers for a production in the Italian capital, and she was offered one of the lead roles, Musetta.

“But she was also engaged at the time to someone in the navy whose superior would not allow him to marry a singer, because that was not considered a respectable profession,” Peleggi explains. “So she got married and never sang again.”

However, her daughter — Peleggi’s grandmother — inherited her love of opera and passed it across the generations, encouraging Peleggi to sign up for a children’s choir that led to a life-changing experience at the age of 13.

“I was singing Carmina Burana… When the huge orchestra in front of me and the adult chorus behind me started, the wave of sound hit me physically,” she has said.

“For the first time, I felt part of something bigger than myself. That is how my passion for music really started — and how I decided to become a conductor.”

Kelly, who has collaborated with NZ Trio, Neil Finn, Don McGlashan, Tami Neilson and others, is delighted that her work will be performed by the NZSO and Voices New Zealand.

“There is nothing quite like the sheer emotional force of an orchestra and choir performing together… not only because of the music, or the astonishing scale of the sound, but also because this vast ensemble reveals—in the most powerful and life-affirming way—the possibilities of creative collaboration.”

The Wellington concert will be livestreamed for free on the streaming service NZSO+.