It could be a love story from an opera itself.
Two people, Amina, 34, and Pene, 38, go to New Zealand when they are young, meet on a training programme for opera singers where their “relationship blossomed”, and now they’re set to make their Covent Garden debut in La Boheme as Rodolfo and Musetta.
It’s even a fluke they got into opera in the first place.
Amina first studied engineering before secretly taking up music, while Pene only joined the choir at school so he could play rugby in a rugby mad country.
Meeting them over Zoom, they are a very happy couple.
If it’s not an opera plot, it’s certainly a Disney-style fairytale which has its latest chapter on the hallowed stage at Covent Garden.
“I know it sounds strange,” begins Pene Pati, “but it feels like I’ve been here before, like it’s part of my home. I don’t know what, but it doesn’t feel like a foreign opera house.”
Adds Amina Edris: “Growing up as singers in New Zealand, the house we looked forward to singing in the most or like we see as the pinnacle, the ‘dream house’ was Covent Garden.
“For American singers, they all dream of the Met, but for New Zealand singers or Australian singers often it’s the Royal Opera house here. It’s awesome! It’s extra-special.”
She added: “It’s great individually for each one of us as artists, but the fact that we get to do it together is extra special, you know.”
This is their seventh production together, including Romeo & Juliet, and Faust.
Said Pene: “In fact, we didn’t have the same agents for a long time. We wanted to go out and pursue things on our own merit and becoming solidified, you know, as a bona fide artist in our own right.
“And I think that was the perfect choice, otherwise we would have been labelled as, ‘Your only singing because the other person is singing’.”
He added: “But when we started rehearsals here, even the conductor didn’t know we were married.”
Asked if performing as a married couple brings them closer — or further apart, Pene replied: “I think when we sing together, it brings us pleasure, for sure.
“But there’s some roles in operas when we don’t sing together. We don’t meet each other on stage at all. We do here, but we’re not each other’s love interest in this story.”
But being a couple does have advantages if you have a massive wardrobe malfunction.
Said Amina: “We were doing a production of The Elixir of Love in New Zealand, and we were eating a lot of junk food.
“Towards the end of the run, the costumes were getting tighter and tighter because we were both putting on so much weight.
“On the last night, in the last scene he declares his love for me and picks me up and spins me around. When he did that, my dress zip broke at the back!
“He was whispering to me, ‘Your dress is split, your dress is split!!’
“Pene held the dress together as we sang facing the audience, and I never turned around. It was pretty funny, and the audience never knew.”
La boheme runs at the Royal Opera House from 16 Dec 2024 – 17 Jan 2025.