Gillian Whitehead’s Mate Ururoa: powerful storytelling with aroha and pride

Composer Gillian Whitehead receiving applause at the end of the premiere performance of Mate Ururoa, with David Tahere (left) and Ariana Tikao (right) and members of Stroma.

Photo credit: Stephen A’Court

When composer Dame Gillian Whitehead took the stage to receive applause at the end of the world premiere performance of her opera Mate Ururoa, she was a small figure amongst cast and musicians, but a mighty presence that had the audience on its feet. The work itself is also small in some ways, just 45 minutes in length, one principal cast member, an instrumental ensemble on stage, a taonga pūoro musician who also becomes a character. Its impact, however, is both profound and powerful.

Whitehead pioneered the use of taonga pūoro with western instruments, working from the late 1990’s with Richard Nunns, a specialist performer on the traditional instruments. Her Hineraukatauri for flute and taonga pūoro was the first of those compositions. It was inspired by the pūtorino, played like a flute or a trumpet, shaped like the female case moth and embodying the voice of Hine Raukatauri, the goddess of music and dance. Many more works with taonga pūoro have followed, as Whitehead’s Māori heritage has played an increasingly important role in her creative life.

Mate Ururoa is a story from the First World War, and before the premiere performance last week, another short New Zealand work, Notes from the Front, set the scene. Composed by Ross Harris in 2014, in collaboration with the late Vincent O’Sullivan, these seven songs, sung by tenor Richard Greager for whom they were written, are a moving account related to the New Zealand mathematician and violinist Arthur Aitken.

As a soldier, Aitken famously played his instrument in the trenches in Gallipoli and France. In this fine semi-staged performance, accompanied beautifully from the piano by Emma Sayers, Matthew Ross strolled casually on to the stage, deposited his instrument case and played his violin, evoking Aitken. Beside him, Greager’s expressive singing conjured, in fierce, grim scenes and language, the ugly tragedy of war.   

Tenor Richard Greager sings Notes from the Front by Ross Harris and Vincent O’Sullivan, accompanied by Emma Sayers (piano) and Matthew Ross (violin)

“…setting the scene for the tragedies of war.”

Photo credit: Stephen A’Court

US-based baritone David Tahere (Ngāpuhi) contacted Whitehead some years ago and commissioned Mate Ururoa, in which he plays Captain Dansey, to whom he has a whānau connection.. The title of the opera comes from a family whakataukī or proverb, “Kaua e mate wheke, mate ururoa” (“Don’t die like an octopus, die like a hammerhead shark.”)

The opening of this premiere production is marvellously effective. Taonga pūoro musician Ariana Tikao (Kai Tahu) plays the haunting kōauau pongāihu , a small flute played with the breath of the nose. The musicians of the Stroma ensemble are also on stage, quietly joining her with wooden percussion, flute and bass, tiny bells and Whitehead’s characteristic parallel string chords, answered by woodwinds. Tahere enters as Dansey, reminiscing in te reo Māori about his life, as he walks beside the waters of Ōhinemutu in Rotorua. The translation is shown on banners at the back of the stage. “Here the steam rises, my home, my resting place.”

Ariana Tikao

...playing the kōauau pongāihu with the breath of the nose.

Photo credit: Stephen A’Court

Mate Ururoa tells the story of Roger Dansey, maternal grandchild of Īhakara Kahuao, leader of Ngāti Rauhoto hapū of Ngāti Tūwharetoa. Dansey, a Māori All Black and engineer, joined the Native Contingent of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) which was part of the British military forces during the First World War. The Native Contingent was patronised by the British and assigned to trench digging and other lowly tasks, but Dansey’s leadership qualities saw him promoted to Captain.

 The powerful story is told directly, using the simplest of means. The disparate threads of the production are seamlessly interwoven, Tahere’s fine baritone singing, taonga pūoro, western instruments, te reo and English languages. The action takes place within an effective design, images and words on banners, costumes quietly symbolic – a Māori cloak, a captain’s hat. As audience, we are drawn into the story, learning that Captain Dansey defied foolish orders in order to protect his men, was charged, disgraced and sent home, the men of his company scattered.

The Commanding Officer (Brent Allcock), singing from the upper gallery in the Hannah Playhouse, accuses Dansey of desertion. The young soldier, distressed, sings of how his men were “courageous warriors” fighting alongside the British. A plaintive trumpet plays faint echoes of the last post, bringing a martial atmosphere, as Tahere sings with increasing emotion of how they fought, “because the Treaty demands it”, in spite of the disrespect they faced. “Diggers, they call us,” and “this is a white man’s war!”.

Tapped stones from the percussionist accompany Tikao’s pūtātara. Whitehead’s writing for Stroma’s fine instrumentalists paints the story with imaginative timbres, martial rototoms and trumpet, sprightly woodwinds and hymn-like fragments from the strings, evoking a spiritual waiata.

The music and drama intensify as Tikao plays the strong trumpet-like pūkaea, and Captain Dansey declaims the whakataukī that gave the opera its name, before breaking into the traditional haka, “Ka mate, ka mate! Ka ora, ka ora! (It is death, it is death! It is life, it is life!”). Images are projected on the banners behind him, instrumentalists unobtrusively accompanying the haka.

Baritone David Tahere with Ariana Tikao

“…performing the traditional haka, Ka mate, ka mate!”

Photo credit: Stephen A’Court

Dansey’s mana was restored in New Zealand when stories of his valour were told by others. He was sent back to Europe, heading an engineering contingent. But his treatment had caused lasting pain; in a moving scene, accompanied by Tikao on wooden flute, he laments his men and sings of his humiliation. "A wooden spear is warded off, passes away! A spear of words wounds deeply!”

Mate Ururoa is an intensely affecting work, created by a composer with huge experience in the operatic art form. Whitehead also wrote the libretto, in te reo and English, her spare, poetic language strong, emotional and stirring. Compositions for the stage are a major strand in Whitehead’s oeuvre, operas, monodramas and other vocal works with text, including six works written in collaboration with New Zealand poet, the late Fleur Adcock.

Just a few weeks ago another stage work by Whitehead had its premiere, The Journey of the Mātaatua Whare. This work tells the story of the carved wharenui from its creation in Whakatāne, the loss of Ngāti Awa control, its travels, mistreatment and return to New Zealand for Dunedin’s 1925 Great Exhibition and then to Tūhura Otago Museum, and its final return to Ngāti Awa in Whakatāne. After a preview with Opus Orchestra to an invited Ngāti Awa audience in Whakatāne, the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra presented the work’s official premiere in the Dunedin Town Hall in June.

Mate Ururoa and The Journey of the Mātaatua Whare both combine Whitehead’s approach from her earlier theatre works and western music influences with her journey to draw increasingly on her Māori heritage. That heritage, and her use of taonga pūoro, have become much more important since her return to Aotearoa at the turn of the 21st century. “The two streams” she told me some years ago “are reconciled now”.

As Mate Ururoa reaches its emotional climax, Tikao takes on the role of Captain Dansey’s mother, singing in te reo, accompanied by flute, played by Bridget Douglas with lovely sensitivity.  Tikao sings the rest of his story as a prediction, foreshadowing Dansey’s early death after being gassed in Europe when he returned to the war, and his burial with his brothers beside the waters of Lake Rotorua. Projected on the banners are the stars to which he returns, and an image of his gravestone.

The final scene of Mate Ururoa

“…an intensely affecting work.”

Photo credit: Stephen A’Court

Kaumātua Sean Ellison from the Dansey whānau then stood from the audience and spoke to his ancestor, as Tikao played gently on the koauau and other instruments crept in quietly. Heads were bowed on stage for a poroporoaki (farewell) and karakia (prayer) and then a large group of Dansey whānau members stood from the audience and sang the himene, the soldiers’ hymn, of which we’d heard musical fragments earlier.  

It was a deeply moving conclusion and the audience sat quietly after the final “Amine” before breaking into applause. Congratulations to Wellington Opera and Stroma for staging this important premiere. It comes at a time when reconciliation of our histories seems hugely important, when the strong, distinctive strands of our cultures need to be carefully and gently entwined with aroha and pride, as described by the Dansey whānau and demonstrated by one of our finest composers. Ka rawe, Dame Gillian Whitehead!

You can read more about Dame Gillian Whitehead’s work in my 80th birthday tributes, “Weaving the threads together” here and “A music of our own” here.

Premiere season of Mate Ururoa by Dame Gillian Whitehead, presented by Wellington Opera and Stroma, Wellington 11-13 July, 2025.
David Tahere (Captain Roger Dansey), Ariana Tikao (taonga pūoro and voice), Brent Allcock (Commanding Officer), Hamish McKeich (conductor).
Notes from the Front by Ross Harris and Vincent O’Sullivan, Richard Greager (tenor) Matthew Ross (violin), Emma Sayers (piano).
Sara Brodie (director), Jacob Banks (lighting and projection), Rebecca Bethan Jones (costume and set).