New Zealand-born Samoan baritone Samson Setu has just completed two years as a Lindemann Young Artist at the Metropolitan Opera. In the 2021/2022 season, he made his Met debut in Don Carlos as a Flemish Deputies. He recently studied at the Royal College of Music, London, completing a Post-Graduate Diploma in Classical Voice.

Samson is a former student in the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Programme for Young Singers, Freemason’s New Zealand Opera Artist, and the Dame Malvina Major Emerging Artist of 2018 for New Zealand Opera.

During the New Zealand Opera’s 2018 season, Samson performed in a revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial By Jury, in the role of the Usher, under the direction of Stuart Maunder. He also covered the role of Colline in Puccini’s La Bohème and covered the role of Dulcamara in Donizetti’s L’elisir D’amore. Through the Royal College of Music in 2019, Samson was cast as Simeon in Debussy’s L’enfant Prodigue and the Sprecher and Sarastro in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Bloomsbury Opera in London which were both cancelled due to the pandemic.

As a finalist in the annual IFAC Handa Australia Singing Competition in 2019, Samson received awards of a three-week program at the State Opera House in Saarbrücken, a four-week intensive course at any Goethe Institut centre in Germany, and an opportunity to participate in the International Vocal Arts Institute (IVAI) Summer Program in New York in 2020. Setu has recently completed the Georg Solti Accademia in June 2022 in Castiglione della Pescaia, Italy and the Opera for Peace academy in Rome.

Samson is still supported by the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation and has been working closely with Dame Kiri and her foundation since being back in New Zealand.