Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has joined Downton Abbey for a single episode to play Australian soprano Nellie Melba. Laura Thompson meets her. Sources 'Dame Kiri Te Kanawa' in Encyclop. Kiri Te Kanawa: A Biography. We’re lucky to have had so much encouragement from all of you and help and input from the world’s most creative musicians and organisations along the way. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Katherine Ciesinski & Kathleen Battle - Final Trio - Der Rosenkavalier - Duration: 7:06. Dame Kiri Lover 73,738 views. Kiri Te Kanawa gained legendary status almost overnight after her sensational debut as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1971. Tells how Paraire Tomoana courted Kuini Ripeka Raerena. Sung by Hayley Westenra and Kiri te Kanawa. View all artists and events on Eventfinda New Zealand events - find festivals, live gigs, music, theatre, arts, culture, sports events and entertainment in nz on. Kiri Te Kanawa Biography - - Academy of Achievement. The internationally famed soprano, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, was born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron in the small New Zealand seaside town of Gisborne, where Captain James Cook first made landfall. Just at the edge of the international date line, it prides itself as the first city in the world to greet the sun. Here, the birth child of a native Maori man and a woman of European extraction was adopted at five weeks of age by a local couple, Tom and Nell Te Kanawa, he also a Maori and she with family ties to the British Isles. The Te Kanawas named their daughter Kiri, the Maori word for bell. She was to be their only child. Some of the soprano's earliest recollections are of blissfully swimming in the sea with her father and of fishing. On one outing, she nearly drowned when a boat capsized, trapping her underneath, until her father managed to dive down and rescue her. And for almost as long as she can remember, she sang. Her first performances were on a little stage jerry- rigged in the Te Kanawa's house, complete with a curtain; . But although her mom played piano, from early on, Kiri eschewed command performances: . I'd only sing when I felt like it. She told her daughter one morning that she had seen a wondrous vision of Kiri singing at London's Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Soon, for Te Kanawa's mother, transforming that vision into a reality became her own life's dream. But the journey from the languid, peaceful New Zealand coast to top billing in London and New York and then super- stardom literally around the globe was a long and arduous one. Te Kanawa says simply that it would take . From there, she would go on to perform at weddings and funerals. The money she pocketed helped pay for her basic necessities, like clothes, as well as for her singing lessons. By 1. 95. 6, wanting to do whatever they could for their daughter's talent, the Te Kanawas had packed up for Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, so Kiri could study with a former opera singer turned nun, Sister Mary Leo, at St. Mary's College for Girls. The schedule was brutal and the schooling, more often than not, a disaster. Te Kanawa was routinely plucked from class in the middle of her lessons to work on her singing whenever Sister Mary was free, and as a consequence, her grades suffered. Within two years, Te Kanawa was asked to leave St. But she never gave up on her singing. She took a job as a receptionist and then as a telephone operator so she could work at night and study singing during the day. And with pluck and daring, she began to enter competitions. Her breakthrough started in 1. Auckland Competition. From there, it was on to voice competitions in Australia. By 1. 96. 5, she had won most of the South Pacific's major vocal prizes. She also sang in music show choruses and nightclubs - - during one memorable performance, Te Kanawa, dressed all in white, serenaded a drunken club crowd with . There, she would finally sing in her first opera. After a master class at the Centre, it was the celebrated Australian conductor, Richard Bonynge, who told Te Kanawa that she was a soprano, not a mezzo soprano. In 1. 96. 7, she married Desmond Park, an Australian engineer whom she met in London, and within seven years, her life would be utterly transformed. Her first milestone was finding former Vienna opera star Vera Rozsa, who became her singing coach. Rozsa systematically schooled her in interpretation and stage acting, as well as the technical aspects of operatic singing. By 1. 97. 0, fulfilling her mother's dream, Te Kanawa made her debut at the famed Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, singing the roles of Xenia in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. She also appeared that season as a flower maiden in Wagner's Parsifal, but the performance that began her stratospheric rise was as Countess Almaviva in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in December of 1. For that, she earned 5. English pounds per week, a salary that remained unchanged for the rest of her five- year contract. Indeed, Te Kanawa describes opera, which requires not simply singing talent, but the ability to act and move in concert with all the other performers on the stage as, quite simply, . There's the instruction. There's the stage movements, the conductor, the agents, singing teachers, and everybody else. Te Kanawa watched a dress rehearsal, an through the entire staging on a cold and snowy Friday and then went home to bed. The next morning, she awoke and contemplated a day of shopping. Stratas, after all, was the one who was the marquee star, and the one who was set to take the stage. Then the telephone rang. Jokingly, she told a friend who was staying with her that if it was the Met to tell them that she had indeed . The next call, from Te Kanawa's agent, was far more frantic, telling her to get down to the opera house. Without even so much as a dressing gown in hand, she hailed a cab on the snow- covered New York streets and hopped in. The cabbie, it turned out, was from Brooklyn and had never been to the Met. Te Kanawa ended up directing him herself and raced through the front door. The matinee curtain was rising imminently, and the backstage staff bundled Te Kanawa into her wig and costume and makeup. The performance was scheduled to be broadcast across the United States. There was, she remembered, no time for nerves, only . Remarkably, she made her New York debut with not a single friend or family member in the audience. An early riser, Te Kanawa never enjoyed late- night post- performance parties or suppers, preferring instead to return home and go to bed. Almost indifferent to the public eye, she dismisses many of her accolades, saying that praise simply . In fact, for all the thunder and noise of the opera stage, she hears with equal and even keener precision the silence, describing the loneliness of leaving the stage after being cheered and handed flowers: . And it's very lonely in the hotel room. There's nothing there. Te Kanawa's mother died not long after her 1. Covent Garden. After a serious bout of illness that forced her to quit performing for three months, Te Kanawa and her husband adopted a daughter, Antonia. Three years later, they adopted a son, Thomas. But the marriage ultimately could not hold; she and her husband divorced in the late 1. She zealously guards her private life, but cryptically says, . Moreover, at more reflective moments, she wonders if she should have given it all up and left the stage. Yet it gave me so much. The little girl from a tiny corner of New Zealand ultimately rose to become a Dame Commander of the British Empire and the recipient of distinguished honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. A concert she gave in Auckland attracted a record- breaking 1. Gisborne, to a global audience in over 8. She was also invited to perform at Buckingham Palace for Queen Elizabeth II's Jubilee. She once described Strauss as . Ironically, the diva who made her mark singing the roles of royalty in elaborate costumes on ornate stages, is a self- described tomboy, who enthusiastically fishes, hikes, boats, plays golf and tennis, and even shoots clay pigeons. Now retired from the operatic stage, she has gradually reduced her engagements, but continues to perform in concert. Her current passion is the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, which she founded to help support promising young New Zealanders with musical talent. The Foundation provides them with mentoring, coaching, and some financial support. She hopes to open doors for them, something she lacked early in her own career. She shares her simple formula for her own success, that she . Watch Dame Kiri sing.
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