‘Hoffman’ is swan song for HOT artistic director

The end of an era comes over the next few days with Hawaii Opera Theatre’s production of “The Tales of Hoffman.” It will be the last opera that company artistic director Henry Akina directs for HOT.

Quick to laugh and a formidable presence on set, Akina, 61, has been a major influence on the local arts scene. Since coming to HOT in 1996, he’s had a hand in more than 60 productions as a stage director or company artistic director, bringing in some of the top names in opera, from Grammy winners such as Jay Hunter Morris (“Turandot,” “The Flying Dutchman”) to Hawaii-born-and-raised star Quinn Kelsey (“Aida,” “Rigoletto”), who began his career in the chorus and now stars in productions worldwide.

Akina was instrumental in developing Hawaii’s young opera talent, helping to found Mae Z. Orvis Opera Studio, and on his watch, the great mezzo soprano Frederica von Stade gave a solo performance and gave a masterclass here in 2012, capping that off in her HOT debut in the excellent “Three Decembers” in March.

“I’m sad to be going, but I think the company’s in good hands now,” said Akina, referring to the leadership of HOT General Director Simon Crookall. “I really know it’s time to go.”

Akina has been diagnosed with a neurological condition and said he plans to move to Florida in retirement to be near friends.

IT WAS pure chance that got Akina into opera, though the seeds were planted early. His parents, both doctors, took him to opera as a child. “I thought it was pretty good,” he said. He also studied several instruments growing up, but considers himself proficient at flute. Perhaps his affinity for its sweet sound engendered an attraction to voice.

A graduate of Punahou School and later a psychology and theater major at Tufts University in Massachusetts, Akina arrived in West Berlin in 1976 as an exchange student in theater. He had studied some German in college, but his ability as a native English speaker got him internships and jobs in West Berlin, which was then oriented toward American and European democracies, while East Berlin and East Germany were controlled by the Soviet Union.

“One theater company hired me as assistant for a theater piece that didn’t come to fruition, and they put me in the opera,” Akina said. “There were a lot of American singers at that time (in Berlin). There was even one woman whose father lived in Waikiki.”

Opera was a world both familiar and unfamiliar to him, and it was entirely intriguing. “The acting was very similar, and the costuming was similar, but aside from that, nothing was,” he said.

He would eventually devote himself fully to opera, working with opera companies in West and East Germany, both of which saw the arts as a way of promoting their cultural and political visions.

“It was a complicated situation,” he said. “My mentor, Harry Kupfer, was from the East, and I worked for him in both West and East Berlin, but he was really from Dresden (in East Germany), so I went down to work with him in Dresden and was just bowled over by the East’s commitment to art at that time.”

Akina also benefited from support from the West Berlin government, which supported a small chamber opera company he founded. Over its 15-year history, the company was widely praised in Germany for its innovative programming.

He remembers going to see a production of “The Barber of Seville” one day and having the taxi driver tell him, “The Easterners are coming!” “We didn’t believe him,” Akina said, laughing in his quick manner. “But they came and had a party and broke down the wall.”

IN 1996, Hawaii Opera Theatre came calling. Akina had worked for a HOT production decades earlier and was asked for his resume, but “there wasn’t anything on it,” he said. “There was a concert in Texas and concert in Egypt, but it didn’t seem to be anything I could recommend. So I thought I would never work here again. And then they called and said, ‘We’re looking for a director again, would you happen to have your stuff ready?’”

Since then, Akina has helped expand HOT’s repertoire, directing contemporary works like “Siren Song” here in 2014, while staying with traditional favorites like “Aida” in 2012. He’s brought new approaches to old favorites, like putting a pop-culture twist on 2014’s “The Mikado,” which featured anime characters and chic Tokyo fashionistas.

His words of wisdom to people who go to opera, and especially to those new to opera?

“It’s the most extreme form of theater that there is. People can respond to it on many different levels,” he said. “They don’t need to talk about this silliness about not understanding it, because they will feel what it is inside no matter what language it is.”