I had long wanted to draw a portrait of Simon O’Neill, a tenor from my homeland New Zealand. Simon is one of those few singers who can sing the more difficult Wagnerian tenor roles with aplomb. My chance came in the winter of 2012 when the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Pietari Inkinen was preparing a concert version of Wagner’s opera Die Walkurie in Wellington. New Zealand. I attended rehearsals to sketch Simon singing and left with a folder full of sketches.
The sketches of Simon and his colleagues are in the book The Painted Musician
