The Man Behind The Music

Oh, the opera! One can’t help but think of the classic art form without imagining ornate costuming, decadent surroundings, melodramatic lighting, sounds that rattle one’s bones and — unquestionably — extraordinary displays of lung capacity. Underneath all of that drama and flair though lies the heartbeat of it all: the music. That’s where people like Herb Mahelona come in.

Day to day, Mahelona serves as the high school choir director at Kamehameha Schools Hawai‘i campus on the Big Island, a role he’s held since 2011. He’s also the composer of 11 operas, having been commissioned by local organizations like Hawaiʻi Opera Theatre, Hawaiʻi Youth Opera Chorus and Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra. This year, he’s celebrating 30 years of opera writing since creating his first piece — a charming children’s production called Auliʻi the Last Menehune of Nuʻuanu Valley for HYOC.

“Opera represents the pinnacle of performing arts in any culture because it incorporates everything,” shares Mahelona. “It’s singing, it’s acting, it’s dancing, it’s instrumental music. There’s visual elements. Everything that you can think of for performing arts, it happens in an opera.”

Specializing in works about Hawaiian moʻolelo (stories), Mahelona has written rock operas (a personal favorite of his as an ’80s music fan), operas completely in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and, as he calls them, “a bunch of hapa ones,” which combine the Hawaiian and English languages.

Despite his numerous writing credits over the decades, Mahelona never considered himself a true composer until recently.

“I didn’t go to music school,” shares the 1985 Kamehameha Schools Kapālama graduate from Kalihi Valley. “I don’t have a composing degree. I kind of skipped all of that.”

Mahelona began his music training as a preteen. He attended piano lessons with his auntie, Miriam Lien, who taught him music theory and how to play by ear, and sparked his interest in studying music.

His second music teacher was the local public library. He’d check out sheet music and recordings of orchestra pieces, symphonies and operas every week to independently study them. He did that for years. 

“Why do I like this part? What is it that I’m hearing that I like? That’s how it started. I just wanted to find out why I liked it so much,” recalls Mahelona. “Then I ended up figuring out how they put it together. I think that’s why I could figure out how to write an opera.”

Mahelona continued his studies at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, majoring in Asian Studies with a focus in Korean literature. He kept music as a side gig and took music classes when he could. In the end, that worked out to his advantage.

“Music majors were too busy to accompany people to do recitals, so people ended up asking me to do it,” Mahelona explains. “So, I performed probably more than a music major did during the time I was there.”

Skilled in piano and cello at the time (he has since expanded his repertoire to include most string instruments), Mahelona got a gig helping the keiki chorus at HYOC. There, he would meet the chorus’ executive director, Nola Nāhulu. The director decided to take a chance on the young Mahelona and hired him to write an opera, his first one in 1996. Mahelona has been writing operas ever since.

“There’s an ʻōlelo noʻeau: ‘Ma ka hana ka ʻike,’” says Mahelona. “‘You learn by doing.’ That’s how I learned.”

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n opera writing, it is common for composers to write the music after receiving the script from the librettist. Mahelona, however, normally creates his music before he even lays eyes on the words. That’s because he has a different initial collaborator in his music-writing: the spirits of the people the opera is about.

“Before I write any music, I try and find a place that’s connected to the story and go there, and try to communicate with the entities involved,” Mahelona explains. “(I) state my intention and ask permission to write the opera first and then ask for any input.

“When I did an opera about Queen Emma, I went to Queen Emma’s Summer Palace. I introduced myself to Queen Emma as if she was there …  and stated my intention: I’m gonna write an opera about you. One: is that OK? May I do it? And then two: Do you have anything that you’d like me to focus on?

“And then, without fail, every single time, when they say yes, I get a very positive feeling that they want to go ahead with the opera, and I always get free music. The music starts downloading in my head.” 

When he finally does receive the words, everything falls perfectly into place.

“I can tell exactly where the music is supposed to go in the script because it’ll just line up with the words,” says Mahelona. “It happens every time.” 

Unlike his ritualistic cleaning of his office (to “symbolically make room for the new information to come in,” he says), introducing himself to those he’s writing about is a relatively new step in the writing process for Mahelona. He adopted the practice when writing his first purely ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi opera, Keaomelemele, in 2012. Previously, his pieces were about general places or concepts like menehune or small towns. For a piece about Hawaiian gods and their journey on the Big Island, Mahelona felt the need to ask permission. He traveled to Mauna Kea, a mountain deemed sacred to the gods in Native Hawaiian mythology.

“(My wife and I) drove up Saddle Road,” Mahelona recalls, “and right when we came up to where you can see Mauna Kea, I swear, I promise you, the opera started playing in my head …

“I had nothing to write with. I told my wife, ʻPull over, pull over!’ So we pulled over. We were digging through the car, trying to find paper or napkins or something, but she found a napkin, and she had a pen. I just started writing down what I heard, which became the opening of Keaomelemele.”

From scribbles on a car napkin, Mahelona created hours worth of music — including all music parts, a music book, a full band score with all the parts compiled together — all within a matter of a few months.   

The practice continued to one of his latest works, Hawaiʻi Opera Theatre’s Kamalehua: The Sheltering Tree, the first-ever professionally produced Hawaiian opera, which premiered at Neal S. Blaisdell Concert Hall in May. Mahelona visited Timoteo Ha‘alilio, the opera’s protagonist, at his resting grounds at Pohukaina, the graveyard in front of ʻIolani Palace. Permission was granted, the music flowed and Mahelona went home to his piano in Hilo. He was given three years to complete the music; he finished everything in one.   

Mahelona believes opera is the perfect medium for sharing stories of Hawaiʻi — and not just locally, but worldwide.

“Opera came out of Europe, specifically in Italy. The majority of operas are written in Italian, so opera audiences are used to sitting for two to three hours listening to a language that they don’t understand,” Mahelona explains. “The burden was on the composer to inform (the audience) with the music what was happening in the plot. Opera audiences are used to figuring stuff out in another language. That’s why it’s the perfect vehicle to attempt something all in Hawaiian.”

The realization that Hawaiʻi had more to offer the world came during a trip to Scotland in 2016. KSH students were invited to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest performing arts festival worldwide. The opera chosen was the 100% ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi piece, Hāʻupu. As the opera’s composer, Mahelona tagged along.

“I was terrified,” Mahelona says of the first performance. “Because either everyone was gonna get it, they’re gonna enjoy it or they might just walk out. We didn’t know. It was dead silent during the whole show. No one said anything. Nobody moved …

“And then the final beat hit … And everybody just jumped up and they started screaming and clapping … and I could see that everybody was crying.

“So I asked the lady (next to me), ‘Why are you crying?’ She goes, ‘It is the most beautiful story I’ve ever seen.’ We did it all in Hawaiian, and they wouldn’t stop clapping, and the audience wouldn’t leave. The manager had to come and ask everybody to please go outside because they were so moved with what they saw.

“That’s when I realized, ‘Wow, Hawaiians, we have a lot to offer the world.’”