Kiri Te Kanawa

• Born: 6 March 1944
• Place of Birth: Gisborne, New Zealand

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is an opera singer and recording artist. A soprano (the highest of the vocal range), she is especially noted for her success in operatic roles written by classical composers Amadeus Mozart and Richard Strauss. She rose to stardom following her 1971 performance as the countess in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at London's Royal Opera House. Since then, she has performed at all of the world's major opera houses, as well as numerous other venues, including concert halls, arenas, festivals, outdoor theaters, and royal tributes. In addition to opera, she sings classical and popular music.

Early Life

Kiri Te Kanawa was born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron on March 6, 1944, in Gisborne, New Zealand, to an Irish mother and Māori father. (Māori are the descendants of the Polynesian and Melanesians who originally settled New Zealand). Her parents were unable to care for her, and when she was a few weeks old, she was adopted by Nell and Tom Te Kanawa. Like her birth parents, Nell was of European descent and Tom was Māori.

Te Kanawa's mother introduced her to music at an early age, and she learned to play the piano and sing when she was very young. By the time she was eight, she had performed on a local radio show. When she was twelve, the family moved to Auckland so Te Kanawa could receive formal voice lessons. She studied with Sister Mary Leo, who had been an opera singer before joining a religious order and becoming a voice teacher.

At sixteen, Te Kanawa enrolled in business school. She worked at a variety of jobs such as a salesperson, receptionist and telephone operator, sang at weddings and clubs, made music recordings, and appeared in several films. She continued her voice lessons and won several vocal competitions, including the Auckland Competition in 1960 and the Mobile Song Quest in 1965.

She also won a four-year scholarship, in 1966, to the London Opera Centre in England. Within two years, she was singing in student productions. In 1969, she left the London Opera Centre and began taking voice lessons with Vera Rozsa, a former mezzo-soprano with the Vienna State Opera.

Professional Life and Career

Shortly after she began studying under Rozsa, Te Kanawa made her first professional appearance. She performed in a few small roles at the Camden Festival in London. In 1970, she took a position as a junior principal with the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Gardens for the 1970–71 season. Her first role was as a flower maiden in Richard Wagner's Parsifal in April 1971 In July 1971, Te Kanawa made her first American performance. She played the role of Countess Almaviva in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro at the Santa Fe Festival. In December, she played the same role at the Royal Opera House in London. Her performance was well received and won her high praise, and the Royal Opera House signed her to a three-year contract. Her career as a professional soprano was firmly launched.

During the early 1970s, Te Kanawa performed in a variety of roles, playing Micaela in Georges Bizet's Carmen and Amelia in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. She travelled the world and performed in the most renowned opera houses. In 1974, Te Kanawa was practising for a new role in which she was to appear starting in March at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. One month earlier, in February 1974, the soprano who was then performing that role fell sick. Te Kanawa was asked to perform in her place just a few hours before the show. She gave an outstanding performance as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, her first appearance to a New York audience. Her success in that role helped cement her growing fame in the United States.

Te Kanawa kept up a hectic schedule during the remainder of the 1970s, debuting at the Paris Opera in 1975 playing Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni. That same year, she was profiled in a television show by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). She appeared in several Strauss operas, including Arabella and Die Fledermaus. She also performed in several operas by Mozart, including Die Zauberflöte and Cosi fan tutte, as well as Verdi's La Traviata, Puccini's La Bohèrme, and Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. On December 31, 1977, her performance as Rosalinde in Die Fledermaus at London's Royal Opera House was televised and shown to US audiences.

Te Kanawa's debut in the movies came in 1979 when she appeared in Don Giovanni, which was directed by Joseph Losey. She played the role of Donna Elvira. Two years later, she sang to her largest audience ever when she sang solo at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. The wedding was broadcast to an international radio and television audience of over 600 million people. In 1982, the queen of England made her a dame commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).

In 1985, Te Kanawa took a break from opera. For nine months she sang only at concerts and recitals. She eventually returned to the opera stage but decreased the number of performances. Around this time, Te Kanawa returned to one of her earlier interests as a recording artist. Diverting from her customary opera singing, some of her earliest albums were popular music. She recorded Blue Skies in 1986 and Kiri Sings Gershwin in 1987. Te Kanawa also pursued interests beyond music. She wrote Land of the Long White Cloud, a children's book about New Zealand, which was published in 1989.

During the 1990s, Te Kanawa continued her career as a recording artist, concert artist and opera performer. In 1990, she toured New Zealand and Australia, performing at outdoor concerts. She sang in a Strauss opera at the San Francisco Opera. She officially opened New Zealand's first world-class performing arts center, the Aotea Centre, in Auckland, and Australia honored her by entering her into the Order of Australia. In 1991, she appeared as a soloist at the premiere of Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio. She recorded Italian Opera Arias (1990), and the following year, she sang in a Mozart opera at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. New Zealand also honored her by entering her in the Order of New Zealand in 1995.

In the later part of the decade, she recorded several albums, including Our Christmas Songs for You (1996) and The Ultimate Christmas Album, with Luciano Pavarotti, Leotyne Price and Joan Sutherland, in 1996. She appeared at opera houses and festivals around the world, and in 1997, she wrote another book, Opera for Lovers.

Te Kanawa welcomed in the new millennium by appearing on 2000 TODAY, on January 1, 2000. The program was a live global telecast to over eighty countries and an estimated audience of over 1 billion people. This far surpassed her earlier record-breaking audience when she sang at the British royal wedding in 1982. In 2002, Te Kanawa gave tribute to England's royal family once again. She sang at a Gala concert in Buckingham Palace honoring Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee.

In 2004, Te Kanawa appeared on the stage in an opera performance for the last time. That same year, she founded the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation in order to help New Zealand singers and musicians. Te Kanawa raised funds for the foundation through appearances at concerts and other events. In 2006, she sang a royal tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. She also released Kiri Sings Karl with composer Karl Jenkins.

At the age of sixty-three, Te Kanawa conducted a "farewell tour". Appearing in recital halls in North America, she performed music by Strauss, Mozart, Aaron Copland, Francis Poulenc, and South American composers Alberto Ginastera and Carlos Guastivino. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa was rumored to have plans to retire completely following a performance of Der Rosenkavalier in April 2010. However, she denied the rumor.

Rather than retire, Te Kanawa continued touring, recording and teaching. She celebrated her five-decade-long recording career with the release of Waiata (2013), with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the University of Auckland Chamber Choir accompanying her. The following year, American composer Jake Heggie honoured her by adapting a set of Emily Dickinson poems into a song cycle specifically for her to perform. That same year Te Kanawa played the role of opera singer Dame Nellie Melba in the British period drama Downton Abbey. In 2016, Te Kanawa revisited her native New Zealand for a six-city recital tour, which included a fund-raiser commemorating the five-year anniversary of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Te Kanawa stopped performing after the 2016 tour and officially announced her retirement in 2017.

Personal Life

Te Kanawa met Desmond Park, an Australian mining engineer, soon after she arrived in London to study. They married on August 30, 1967, and had two children: Antonia, who was adopted in 1976, and Thomas, who was adopted in 1979. Te Kanawa's husband became her manager in the 1980s. Due to her busy performance schedule, they often spent long periods of time apart. In 1994, the marriage ended and they later divorced in 1997.

Te Kanawa is an avid fisher and golfer. She has fished for salmon in Vancouver and Iceland, mahi mahi in Mexico and trout in New Zealand. She lived in England until 2021 when she moved back to New Zealand with her new husband, Kevin.

Bibliography

Jones, Rebecca. "Dame Kiri Te Kanawa: I Won't Sing in Public Again." BBC, 13 Sept. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41243394. Accessed 6 June 2024.

"Kiri Te Kanawa." New Zealand History, Ministry for Culture and Heritage, New Zealand Government, 9 May 2014, nzhistory.govt.nz/media/video/kiri-te-kanawa. Accessed 6 June 2024.

McLachlan, Marilynn. "Dame Kiri’s Gilded Age: ‘Home Is Where My Heart Is’." Now to Love, 14 Mar. 2024, www.nowtolove.co.nz/celebrity/celeb-news/dame-kiri-te-kanawa-home/. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Morrison, Richard. "'I Didn't Think I Was Being Defiant. It Was Just Self-Preservation.'" The Times(UK), 22 Feb. 2014, pp. 8–9. Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=azh&AN=7EH82671723. Accessed 6 June 2024.