Kiri Te Kanawa was born in Gisborne New Zealand and studied music and singing under Dame Sister Mary Leo.
In 1965 she won the Mobil Song Quest and later the Melbourne Sun Aria contest and, with the aid of a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Scholarship, left New Zealand at the age of twenty-one to study at the Opera Study Centre in London.
In the genre of opera, Kiri Te Kanawa is a familiar figure in the leading opera houses of the world - Covent Garden, the Metropolitan, the Chicago Lyric Opera, Paris Opera, Sydney Opera House, the Vienna State, La Scala, San Francisco, Munich and Cologne. Her lyric soprano heroines include the three major leading roles by Richard Strauss (Arabella, The Marschallin, and the Countess in Capriccio); Mozart's Fiordiligi, Donna Elvira, Pamina and, of course, the Countess Almaviva; Verdi's Violetta, Amelia Boccanegra, Desdemona; Puccini's Tosca, Mimi and Manon Lescaut; Johann Strauss' Rosalinde, and Tchaikovsky's Tatiana, also Bizet's Micaela (or Carmen) and Gounod's Marguerite.
On the concert stage she has performed with with the world's major orchestral ensembles - Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony and the Boston Symphony under the baton of such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa and Sir Georg Solti.
She has appeared at venues both vast and specialised including Glyndebourne, Tanglewood, Ravinia, the arena at Verona, the Hollywood Bowl, the festivals of Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg, and the desert outback of Australia.
Kiri has released a number of distinguished recordings including the complete Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosí fan Tutte, Die Zauberflöte and Tosca, La Rondine and Manon Lescaut, plus Simon Boccanegra, Arabella, Otello, La Traviata, Der Rosenkavalier, Faust, Eugene Onegin, Carmen, Capriccio and La Bohème, along with selections of arias from French, Italian and German operas.
Outside the operatic field, her recordings are equally extensive and include: Mozart concert arias; the Strauss Four Last Songs; and the notably successful Songs of the Auvergne (top of the best-seller charts in Britain); Berlioz's Nuits d'été; Brahms' German Requiem; Handel's Messiah, and the Beethoven 9th and Mahler 4th Symphonies.
Created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1982, Kiri Te Kanawa has been conferred with honorary degrees from the Universities in Cambridge, Oxford, Dundee, Durham, Nottingham, Sunderland, Warwick, Auckland, Waikato and Chicago. She is also an honorary fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, and Wolfson College, Cambridge, and was invested with the Order of Australia in 1990. In the 1995 Queen's Birthday Honours List, she was awarded the prestigious Order of New Zealand. Kiri is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music.
As a soloist at the wedding of HRH Prince Charles in St Paul's Cathedral, she faced one of the largest direct telecast audience of any singer in history (estimated to be over 600 million people). 1990 saw another record when, during a tour of Australia and New Zealand, her outdoor concert in the city of Auckland attracted a crowd of 140,000.
After twenty five years at the forefront of musical life, in 1994 Kiri celebrated her 50th birthday, culminating in a spectacular Birthday Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London.
Dame Kiri released a new album "Maori Songs" (EMI Label), a tribute to her background and homeland, and also performed in Gisborne, New Zealand, to welcome the first dawn of the new Millennium. Dame Kiri was the single most featured artist throughout the 2000 TODAY live global telecast - the longest ever continuously live programme, broadcast to over 80 countries and an estimated audience of over one billion people.
2002 saw her performing at the Gala concert on 1st June, at Buckingham Palace, in celebration of the Queen's Jubilee, and playing the title role in Vanessa at The Washington Opera (a role she subsequently reprised at Los Angeles Opera). A Gala Concert was given in February 2004 in Auckland, to launch The Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, a charity which aims to give support and financial aid to dedicated New Zealand singers and musicians. Dame Kiri continues to devote her experience and expertise to organising and appearing at further concerts and Galas to raise funds for this Foundation and the UK based Friends of the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation.
In March 2006 Dame Kiri sang a tribute to the Queen at the Opening Ceremony of the 18th Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and in October 2006 released an exciting new album (EMI label) in collaboration with composer Karl Jenkins, entitled Kiri Sings Karl. In April 2007 she was honoured by the Metropolitan Opera Guild at their 72nd annual tribute luncheon. Dame Kiri continues to perform in concert halls and arenas throughout the world, with performances for 2007 in New Zealand, Japan, Korea, England, Brazil, Turkey, Jersey, the USA, Canada, Hungary, Spain, Hong Kong and China.
She was in New Zealand last week performing at Auckland's Starlight Concert and then a guest appearance on TVNZ's Dancing With The Stars. After that she said she was going to take a weeks holiday and go fishing.
Import.flv (6.6 MB)
