Source: Radio New Zealand
Brothers Pene Pati and Amitai Pati are members of the much-loved operatic trio Sol3 Mio and world-class tenors.
A new documentary Tenor: My Name Is Pati charts their individual paths from South Auckland church halls to the international stage – and the tenacity required for the journey.
“I was watching this film, going, ‘God, this kid is stubborn’. And then I realised, was he stubborn or did he just constantly believe?” Pene tells RNZ’s Afternoons.
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“It’s about someone who was courageous enough to do it. Someone who faced it on, who was fearless.
“I hope people see that the difference between impossibility and inevitability, it’s just belief, and that you just gotta have the courage to do it.”
Pene Pati as the Duke of Mantua in the New York Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto.
New York Metropolitan Opera / Jennifer Taylor
Behind the scenes with Sol3 Mio’s Pene Patti Afternoons
Born in Samoa, Pene started putting together the “building blocks to becoming an artist” at Mangere Methodist Church, where he played piano and conducted the youth choir.
While participation in the musical side of the church was ‘regimented’ and ‘heavily enforced’ by his parents as a child, he says his upbringing also taught him resilience.
“I thought, Oh, I never felt like I could leave this space. I thought leaving for shores beyond would be… huge, I’d be frowned upon. They’d be like, why are you leaving us?
“But then I looked back, and I thought, well, this is what it was all about. It was to build me up, to become this man, to go out there and face the challenges.”
Amitai Pati, Moses Mackay and Pene Pati of Sol3 Mio, who first performed in 2012.
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While Pene and Amitai’s “typical Samoan parents” are very proud, Pene says, they always encouraged humility. After watching the film, he was surprised to find his father speechless.
“Dad likes to give a lecture at the end of everything, saying, ‘Oh, you know, listen here, in my day…’ But after this was the first time it rendered him silent.” Pene says.
Tenor: My Name is Pati director Rebecca Tansley Culture 101
Pene’s “enormous self-discipline” shines through as he navigates his hectic professional life, Tenor: My Name Is Pati’ s writer, director and producer Rebecca Tansley tells RNZ’s Culture 101.
“He’s a very busy man and [opera] is very competitive. You have to be on form every time when you step on the stage, you can’t really have a bad day.”
Amitai Pati and his partner Adela Zaharia, a Romanian soprano.
RNZ / Jessie Chiang
While Pene is the main focus of Tenor: My Name Is Pati , his brother Amitai also pops in and out.
The brothers are “very different personality-wise”, Tansley says, and also in how they approach their craft.
“Amitai’s incredibly focused on being really, really good, and he is really, really good… Pene is obviously also really, really good, but he’s following it for a slightly different reason. I think he just genuinely loves it, you know. It’s just he gets so much from it, from giving to people.
“I think that comes across to both in his everyday life dealings and how he manages to cope with those pressures, but also when he performs, how audiences connect with him.
Tenor: My Name Is Pati premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival a couple of weeks ago and was met with “standing ovations, men crying and everyone laughing”, Tansley says.
It opens in cinemas on Thursday 6 March.
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Behind the scenes with Sol3 Mio’s Pene Patti Afternoons
Tenor: My Name is Pati director Rebecca Tansley Culture 101
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/07/pene-pati-watched-himself-in-new-doco-god-this-kid-is-stubborn/