Winning regular roles or a position with an opera company took years of study, teamwork with directors, musicians and other performers, and plenty of support from people like managers, personal assistants and publicists.
"You can sing like a lark, but that doesn't mean you are going to make it. . . .
"There are a lot of opera singers out there. It is a rough world, a very competitive world," he said in Dunedin yesterday.
The United States-born tenor (59) has performed for more than 40 years in countries as diverse as Japan, Russia and the Philippines and has been teaching for the past 15 years.
He has lived in Italy most of his life and is a permanent member of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy, as well as teaching at the Academy of Young Singers which is affiliated to the opera company.
He is making his first visit to New Zealand as guest of the New Zealand Association of Teachers of Singing and led a master class yesterday for University of Otago voice students.
Music was an everyday part of life as he grew up, he said.
Songs were always being sung and the family listened to opera on the radio.
"I liked opera from the time I was very young. I knew that was what I wanted to do."
So what advice does Mr Manno give aspiring opera singers? He tells them being successful is all about being able to communicate through music - being theatrical performers who understand the context of what they are singing and are able to make an audience leave atheatre moved in some way.
"The audience might leave happy, sad, subdued or even silent, but they should leave with some emotion."
However, singers should not depend on an audience to lift their performances, he said.
"You can't always depend on an audience, but you can always depend on the music."
He said he tried to communicate his own love of opera to students.
"To me it is a mission - a way of life. Not a sacrifice, because that implies giving something up, but as a marvellous way to live."
When asked about the trend for opera to be commercialised by groups such as the Ten Tenors and others, Mr Manno said he had no time for it, calling it "totally fake".
"People who hear . . . singers using microphones are not hearing real opera.
"Real opera involves six to eight years of study, learning different languages and performing in front of crowds of between 800 and 4000 people."
However, he said he embraced attempts to market "real opera" to the masses.
Many live opera performances were now being filmed and screened on television or in cinemas.
