Filipe Manu holds a Bachelor of Music and a Postgraduate Diploma with Distinction from the University of Waikato, where he studied under the tutelage of Dame Malvina Major as a Sir Edmund Hillary scholar. A current student on the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Opera programme, he is studying towards his Masters in Music with world renowned soprano Yvonne Kenny.

He has been selected as an artist for the London based Samling Artist programme for the 2018/2019 intake. A former Dame Malvina Major Emerging Artist with New Zealand Opera, he was selected for both the inaugural Dame Malvina Major Opera programme and the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation Singers’ Development programme. He is a proud alumni of both the New Zealand Opera School and the New Zealand Youth Choir.

Filipe has achieved notable success in aria competitions nationally and internationally, most recently winning Australias' prestigious competition the IFAC Handa - Australian Singing Competition in Sydney along with the Audience prize. In 2016 he was the runner up in both of New Zealand’s most prestigious competitions, the Lexus Song Quest and the New Zealand Aria. He has been the proud recipient of the Iosefa Enari memorial award, the Patricia Pratt scholarship and the David Beattie scholarship.

He has recorded with New Zealand pop singer Anna Hawkins featuring on her album Divine and on Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s 2013 album Waiata with the NZSO.

Most recently, Filipe performed as apart of a small ensemble with the LSO under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle in Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust and later made his solo debut at the Barbican Centre in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with the LSSO. Later in 2018 Filipe will perform Ferrando in Così fan tutte, and Lysander in A Midsummer Nights Dream in early 2019 as apart of the Guildhall School’s main stage Opera productions.

Filipe proudly acknowledges the support of the Dame Malvina Major Foundaiton, the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, The New Zealand Opera Foundation Trust and the Auckland Rototary Club. 

 

Operatic experience: Rinuccio Gianni Schicchi Auckland Opera Factory, Arturo Lucia di Lammermoor, Pilades Oreste, Milord L'italiana in Londra, chorus La Clemenza di Tito, La Sonnambula Auckland Opera Studio, Don Curzio Le Nozze di Figaro Bloomsbury Opera, Tebaldo I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Lensky Eugene Onegin (David Lloyd-Jones translation) Days Bay Opera, Count Almaviva The Barber of Seville (abridged production) Nemorino The Elixir of Love (abridged production), chorus Nixon in China, Don Giovanni, Die Zauberflöte, Turandot, The Rake’s Progress, La Traviata, Der fliegende Holländer New Zealand Opera, Daniel Betly, First Man in Armour and First Priest Die Zauberflöte University of Waikato, excerpts from La fille du régiment, La Cenerentola, Hamlet, Capriccio, Die Fledermaus Guildhall School.