With a huge note of gratitude, the unstoppable Dame Kiri Te Kanawa plans exciting times ahead. Photo / Jae Frew
She’s as comfortable in gumboots tending to the land as she is in elaborate gowns on the grandest stages in the world. And at 82 years young, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s life shows no signs of slowing down.
“There’s a lot going on,” Kiri tells the Weekly from her home in Northland, where she lives with her husband Kevin, enjoying her busy schedule. “I can’t think of one day when I’m bored. That hasn’t come into my life in the past 50 years. This morning, we started early and took the dogs for a walk. We’ll be in the garden today. We have masses of things – lettuce, cabbage, kale, onions, leeks, celery, basil, as well as lots of different flowers. We’ll be picking some kale for roasting later, which is exciting.
“I’ve been up and down to Auckland and Wellington. I do a lot of letter writing, a lot of references and recommendations, which I get asked to do frequently. I have regular communication with our trustees [of the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, which mentors young singers here and overseas]. My days are full, I must say. I look forward to the weekends when my phone won’t ring!”
Kiri also had a hip replacement six months ago, which she has coped easily with.
“I’m doing amazingly well,” she says. “You don’t know how much pain you’re in until it’s gone. It didn’t take very long to get rid of the pain after the operation – I would recommend it to anyone who needs it.”
Kiri adds that she exercises at three o’clock each afternoon to help with the healing.
Also in her very full life is her grandson Luther, whom she adores and who was a significant part of her decision to return to New Zealand to live in 2021. She’s also preparing to ditch the gumboots for glamour for a very significant event this Matariki weekend. On July 11, the country will come together for the inaugural Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Song Quest and naturally, Kiri will be there.
“It will be really nice,” she enthuses. “I don’t even want to think about who is going to take first place as they are all good singers. All of them are great.”
Having mentored up-and-coming singers for more than 20 years, putting her name to the competition felt fitting – it was, after all, the very same competition she won in 1965 when it was the Mobil Song Quest. Winning meant a modest but important sum of money (£300) – enough to get to London – and the start of a career that elevated her to become one of the world’s greatest opera singers.
“It was the beginning of what might happen in the future. You don’t know what the future is going to be, but from my experience, it can develop in exciting ways. As long as you continue to take the right road, this competition should be the right road to start that career,” she says of the young singers hoping to take home the title.
Kiri has fond memories of the competition that she entered not once, but twice. In her first, she placed second, but it exposed her to a potential life that the passion for her art could offer.
“It was an extraordinary experience where I met James Robertson [an artistic director and conductor] who said to me, ‘You can go for it again and try to win it,’ which I eventually did.”
Recalling that chilly night in Dunedin when her name was announced as the winner, Kiri admits that deep down, she believed she knew the outcome before she stepped on to the stage.
“I suppose in a terrible way as a young person, I thought, ‘I’ll win this,’” she shares. “I had the feeling that it was my time back then. And maybe since it’s always been my time. I’ve been in the right place at the right time for many, many years.
“I came from a very basic background with parents who loved me,” she says of Tom and Nell, who adopted her when she was five weeks old. “There are people born in far better circumstances, but I believe I was some sort of golden child. I was just lucky.
“There are things that just happened to me. I was given a beautiful name, and my mother decided I was going to be a singer and put me on stage doing little dances and things. Everything was geared towards me doing this and I made it work.
“I think all I wanted to do was sing because I thought back then that the easiest thing I could do in the world was sing. All my life, I just sang well and tried to do my best, and things happened.”
Kiri counts the moment she stepped on stage in 1974 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Desdemona in Otello as one such example of serendipity. As the understudy at the time, she was given just three hours’ notice that she’d be performing. And the audience went wild.
“I finished the performance and they were trying to clear the dressing room and stage for the next performance, and no one would go home!”
Captivating audiences, it was a key performance that catapulted her to global stardom.
Kiri also found such achievements as being awarded the Order of the Companions of Honour, an elite and esteemed UK title held by only 65 living people within the Commonwealth at any one time, or being made a Dame in 1982, astonishing. She was also awarded the Order of New Zealand in 1995, our highest award, of which there are only 20 living recipients at any time.
“I wonder, how did that happen?” she muses. “It was an absolute shock. These sort of things just happen, but did they happen because I was okay? Was I good? Was my career good? I don’t know. But it’s an honour.”
Yet there’s no doubt that being in the “right place at the right time” has also meant a life of much sacrifice and one that certainly isn’t for the faint of heart.
“I was a 21-year-old coming out of little New Zealand who hit Carnaby Street and everything to do with the Beatles,” Kiri explains. “But then I met an agent early on, which was very lucky. I had good singing teachers, who stayed with me for many years. Everything about my life was organised.”
She also says her first husband, Desmond Park, was “very supportive”, but “then that didn’t work. The marriage went to pieces, but that happens sometimes after so many years. You can’t blame it, but the career survived”.
And she says of her two children, Toni and Tom, “they suffered because I wasn’t always there”.
Whether sacrifice or serendipity, it’s clear that throughout her astounding career, Kiri wore a figurative cloak of New Zealand and New Zealanders across her shoulders.
“A singer in the early days said to me, ‘Remember you’re representing your country,’ and I always felt that, whether singing in Māori or English, or any other language. My country mattered to me and was always my priority.”
Perhaps there was no performance where this was felt more keenly than at the 1981 wedding of the then-Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.
“It was so important that someone from New Zealand sang at that wedding,” tells Kiri, who remains close to the royal family. “If we look at 200 years from now, they will have forgotten me, but that will always be in the history books.”
With a life that was structured up to five years in advance and a career that “takes up almost 24 hours of your day, whether it is your sleeping pattern, eating pattern or work pattern”, organisation became – and remains – an important part of Kiri’s life.
“I love organisation!” she declares. “I have a very organised schedule. Even now, I have to plan things thoughtfully.”
While she remains in peak demand for various people and her mentoring work, these days Kiri makes use of those organisational skills to have time for – and appreciate – life’s quieter moments.
Instead of staying in Wellington for the week between the semi-finals and finals of the upcoming opera competition, she’ll need to fit in a visit to Auckland – it’s Grandparents’ Day at Luther’s school after all and there’s no chance she’ll miss that.
Kiri says her grandson is “really, really good and very bright”. She adds, “He loves his grandpa Kev, which is lovely.”
And back home, her large property that’s “in the bush” has many, many trees that need tending and chopping for environmental purposes, bringing more beauty to her world.
“We have a lot of wildlife,” Kiri shares. “There’s a new little green parrot [kākāriki] that has been released up here. They’re gorgeous and we have three of them, and we have seven royal spoonbills that have come onto the beach, so that’s really nice.”
With her dogs, gardening, fishing, her grandson and her countless commitments, it’s easy to see why boredom simply isn’t an option.
“We can’t have a minute for that, especially if the sun’s out!” Kiri points out. “Even if it’s raining, it’s good because then we can do other things.”
And as for singing? While New Zealanders get the occasional thrill of hearing her unmistakable voice, such as when she joined former student and opera singer Kawiti Waetford in singing Pōkarekare Ana in an impromptu performance at Parliament House for her 80th birthday – for which she received a standing ovation – these days you’re most likely to find her singing behind the wheel on long drives.
“It keeps me awake between Northland and Auckland,” she quips.
While she’s a fan of Dusty Springfield, it’s heavy metal band Disturbed’s haunting rendition of The Sound of Silence that is on repeat.
“He’s an extraordinary singer,” she says.
A reminder, perhaps, that Dame Kiri Te Kanawa remains as captivating and as full of surprises as ever.
The Kiri Te Kanawa Song Quest Grand Final (with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) is on Saturday, July 11 at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington. To purchase tickets, visit songquest.nz.