The alchemist

Talent and a little magic have taken state-house kid Moses Mackay to the heights of Italian opera. He's coming back to sprinkle some of his gold dust around. 

- MICHELE HEWITSON

In his apartment in Bologna, the opera singer Moses Mackay, who once moonlighted as a reality TV star, was hosting a soirée. To hold a properly elegant soirée, one must first acquire a salon.

Some salon. He has been living in a 16th-century palazzo in Italy that is as grand and as beautiful as it sounds. There are marble floors and original frescoes. There is a grand piano. There is a mezzanine balcony from which to look down upon a suave geezer in an elegant linen jacket and a crisp white shirt singing an aria or two. The soirée was an early birthday celebration and an arrivederci to Bologna and his Italian mates.

Not too bad, eh, for a boy whose first home was a state-house apartment in Northcote on Auckland's North Shore? "A prostitute lived in the flat above us and below us lived a drug dealer. Once, there was a drive-by shooting where guns were fired at the house."

Mackay was so young he doesn't remember the details, but he does remember a general atmosphere of unease and insecurity. There came a series of state houses and hand-me-down clothes and school lunches of peanut butter sandwiches, which he hated so much he'd leave them in the bottom of his school bag until he got so hungry he'd pick the mouldy bits off the bread and eat the sandwich anyway, shamefacedly. He remembers being always hungry and always tired.

He grew up and bought a house and gave the key to his mum. He said, "This is ours now. No one can take it away from us."

The reason for the arrivederci is that he is returning to New Zealand for NZ Opera's production of Rossini's comic opera, Le comte Ory. He will play Raimbaud, companion to the sex-obsessed Count Ory, who is a sort of 19th-century version of Hugh Hefner - Raimbaud helps him plot tricks to get hot chicks into the sack.