The music of New Zealand has been influenced by a number of traditions, including Māori music, the music introduced by European settlers during the nineteenth century, and a variety of styles imported during the twentieth century, including blues, jazz, country, rock and roll, reggae, and hip hop, with many of these genres given a unique New Zealand interpretation.
Sir Simon Keenlyside is a British baritone who has performed in operas and concerts since the mid-1980s.
Ian Charles Bostridge CBE is an English tenor, well known for his performances as an opera and lieder singer.
Richard Sidney Hickox was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music.
David Atherton is an English conductor and founder of the London Sinfonietta.
Simon John O'Neill is a New Zealand-born operatic tenor. In 1998, his image appeared on the New Zealand one-dollar performing arts postage stamp.
Paul Goodwin is an English conductor and former oboist.
Anna Leese is a New Zealand born soprano opera singer.
Matthew Rose is an English operatic bass.
Barry Banks is a Grammy Nominated English/American lyric tenor who, after a long association with The Metropolitan Opera and English National Opera, has achieved acclaim as one of finest interpreters of the Italian bel canto repertoire.
Peter Coleman-Wright is an Australian baritone from Geelong. He began his career at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, where he sang Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, winning the Touring Prize. Subsequently, he sang Sid in Albert Herring and Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Pizzaro in Fidelio.
Bryan Ernest Hare Drake was a New Zealand-born baritone who became particularly associated with the operas of Benjamin Britten.
Jacques Imbrailo is a South African classical baritone, who sings in operas and oratorios.
Tecwyn Evans is a New Zealand conductor. He holds a faculty position teaching conducting at the University of Auckland School of Music and in 2018 he was named as Director of Music of Den Jyske Opera.
Patricia Katherine Payne is an operatic mezzo-soprano and contralto from New Zealand. A member of London's Royal Opera House, she made an international career, performing leading roles of both Wagner and Italian repertory at major opera houses of the world. After decades of singing, she became a visual artist.
Dunedin Symphony Orchestra is a professional symphony orchestra based in Dunedin, New Zealand. It hosts an annual subscription series of concerts in the Dunedin Town Hall, performing repertoire from the Classical, Romantic and contemporary periods. It also regularly accompanies Dunedin stage performances by the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Opera Otago and City Choir Dunedin.
Winifred Honor McKellar is a New Zealand former mezzo-soprano opera singer and singing teacher, and was the first full-time lecturer in singing at the University of Otago in Dunedin. Her students have included Jonathan Lemalu, Patrick Power and Matt Landreth. In 1989, she was awarded a Queen's Service Medal for services to music, and in 2012, she was made a life member of the New Zealand Association of Teachers of Singing.
Alan Robert Pearson was a neo-expressionist painter who lived in New Zealand and, in his later life, Australia.
The opera Hōhepa, composed by Jenny McLeod, premiered at the Opera House in Wellington in March 2012, in a production by NBR New Zealand Opera. It starred Phillip Rhodes, Deborah Wai Kapohe, Jonathan Lemalu, and Rawiri Paratene. It relates the true story of the friendship between Māori chief Hōhepa Te Umuroa and English colonist Thomas Mason during the New Zealand Wars.
Samson Setu is a New Zealand-born bass-baritone opera singer of Samoan descent.
