{"id":233040,"date":"2026-01-14T16:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T16:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/233040\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T16:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T16:44:07","slug":"review-new-zealand-opera-school-students-soar-in-sublime-st-cecilia-mass-at-whanganui-chapel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/233040\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: New Zealand Opera School students soar in sublime St Cecilia Mass at Whanganui chapel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">St Cecilia Mass by Charles Gounod was an inspired choice for the New Zealand Opera School students under the baton of astounding music director Michael Vinten and acclaimed organist Nicholas Forbes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">They were joined by an ensemble including pianist David Kelly, Tahu Pikimaui, Ben Thompson and Hayden Davis from Brass Whanganui, cellist Anne Hunt and flautist Dr Luc Manghi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">This performance in the glorious chapel was magnificent and these students were inspired and rousing the capacity congregation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Soloists, including sopranos Emma Jones, Sarah Mileham, Niamh Bentley and Jasmine Jessen, were glorious all in heavenly voice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Counter tenor Jack Doyle thrilled with his solo of Ave Maria, his voice literally ringing with sublime ease to the rafters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Here we are in a small town far drinking in the peace and beauty of live music in a special chapel. What a privilege.<\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">As Les Miserables writer Victor Hugo said: \u201cMusic expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"XFozzeHJqgxP\" style=\"display:none\">Simply, we were awed and so very proud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St Cecilia Mass by Charles Gounod was an inspired choice for the New Zealand Opera School students under&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1975,31161,44335,78,27612,157,117,111,43,139,69,44525,35115,762,4062,26213,11420,3767,138235,1883,80],"class_list":["post-233040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-at","tag-cecilia","tag-chapel","tag-in","tag-mass","tag-music","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opera","tag-praise","tag-review","tag-school","tag-soar","tag-st","tag-students","tag-sublime","tag-whanganui","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}