Easter Festival on offer
The Hawke’s Bay Easter Festival, running from Thursday, April 9 to Monday, April 13, is promising a wealth of opportunities for spectators again this Easter, a tradition in its 112th year and organised by the Napier Performing Arts Competitions Society.
Vocalists between 16 and 18 will be performing solos, songs in costume, light entertainment, folk or traditional numbers, sacred solos and spirituals, while competitors aged 16 and over also have the choice of performing duets, songs by New Zealand composers and those sung in Ma¯ ori.
A wide variety of awards and scholarships from local families and businesses are up for grabs. Spectators can attend all sessions including junior vocal (Friday morning in Trinity Methodist Church, Napier), ballet, tap and modern dance (from Friday morning in Municipal Theatre, Napier) and instrumental (from Thursday evening in Municipal Theatre, Napier) which last year attracted around 200 young competitors. Admission is $5 for adults and $2 for children.
The first prize of $500 for the recital class held in the Pan Pac
Foyer in the Municipal Theatre at 7.30pm on Good Friday is this year being sponsored for the first time by Taradale U3A, which fosters relationships between the older and younger members of the community.
Competitors in this class each perform a 15-minute programme consisting of three items, a 20th
Century art song, a French Me´ lodie or German Lieder, as well as an item of their own choice. Finalists in this class often go through to the preliminary and sometimes final rounds of the prestigious Aria competition, won in 2015 by Hastings local Benson Wilson.
In 2018, he won the Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge Foundation Bel Canto Award and was also awarded the People’s Choice award. Before heading to the UK to study at the Guildhall School of Music in London, he won New Zealand’s premiere singing competition, the Lexus Song Quest.
Since September 2019 he has been a young artist at the National Opera Studio and will be part of that programme until June 2020.
The preliminary rounds of the Hawke’s Bay Aria takes place in the Century Theatre at 7.30pm on Saturday, April 11, while the finals also take place there as part of a Gala Evening at 7.30pm on Sunday, April 12. Tickets for these are available from Ticketek, or from the box office one hour prior to each performance. Recital Class ($10) Aria Preliminaries ($15) and Aria Gala Evening ($25).