Kiri Te Kanawa is a New Zealand soprano born in Gisborne in 1944. For more than four decades she was one of the most admired lyric voices in the world, with central roles in Mozart and Richard Strauss and a regular presence at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala. In 1981 she sang before hundreds of millions of viewers at the wedding of Charles and Diana. Her warm, even timbre remains a point of reference for lyric sopranos.
Born in 1944 in Gisborne, New Zealand, of Maori and European descent, she trained first in Auckland with Sister Mary Leo, a nun who taught several New Zealand singers. In the mid-1960s she won the leading singing competitions of her region and travelled to London to complete her studies at the London Opera Centre.
Her breakthrough came in December 1971, when she sang the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The critics hailed a new voice and a natural stage presence. From there, the doors of the Metropolitan in New York, La Scala in Milan and the Paris Opera opened to her.
Her repertoire centred on Mozart and Richard Strauss. In Mozart she was the Countess, Fiordiligi and Donna Elvira; in Strauss, Arabella and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, two roles that seemed written for her serene elegance. She also sang Desdemona in Verdi's Otello and Mimì in La bohème.
Beyond the opera house she left widely circulated recordings: Strauss's Four Last Songs, Puccini arias such as O mio babbino caro and, in 1984, the recording of West Side Story conducted by Leonard Bernstein, alongside José Carreras.
On 29 July 1981, Kiri Te Kanawa sang Handel's Let the bright Seraphim in St Paul's Cathedral, London, during the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. The broadcast reached a worldwide audience of hundreds of millions and made the soprano a familiar face far beyond the opera public.
The following year she was made a Dame of the British Empire. Few classical singers have achieved that combination of professional prestige and general popularity.
Her last public performance as a singer took place in 2016, and in 2017 she announced that she would not sing on stage again. Since then she has devoted herself to teaching and to her foundation, created to support young singers from New Zealand.
Her legacy is twofold: an extensive discography, with benchmark recordings in Mozart and Strauss, and an instantly recognisable timbre, warm and even, still cited as a model of lyric singing.
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