大象传媒

1. Kiri was adopted at a few months old

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s life began far from the glamorous world of opera. She was born in Gisborne, New Zealand, where she was raised by adoptive parents. She says her father, who owned a trucking company, was not originally keen to take her in. “He said, ‘No, I want a boy,’” says Te Kanawa, but her mother agreed to take her while her father was away. “He came home to find he had a girl, not a boy.” And he parented as he’d always intended. “He taught me to fish and shoot and do all the things that boys do. While I didn’t turn out to be a boy, I loved all those activities.”

2. She doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t sing

Asked when she started singing, Te Kanawa says simply “forever”. She would sing as her mother played piano, performing songs like Daisy, Daisy. She says her mother was a “tough woman” but encouraged her talent, telling her to sing whenever possible, including as a car sickness cure. “I would get car sick, so she’d make me sing, because then I would breathe properly and I wouldn’t get sick.”

3. She wanted to sing musical theatre, not opera

Te Kanawa was tutored in singing at school, where her talent flourished, but it was at the age of 17 that she decided to try to make it her career. At that point her sights were set on musical theatre. “I only wanted to do that. I never thought I’d do opera,” she says. It was specifically the role of Maria in West Side Story she wanted to play, having fallen in love with the 1961 movie. “I dreamed about it,” she says. “The whole thing. The story, the dance, the lovely romance.” She eventually got to perform the role in an operatic version conducted by Leonard Bernstein, writer of West Side Story’s score, with Jose Carreras as her Tony.

4. She wasn’t always a good student

Te Kanawa on television in 1972

Opera began for Te Kanawa with a singing competition in New Zealand. After she won – on her second try – she was accepted into the London Opera Centre. Moving from rural New Zealand to London in 1966, and joining a school of aspiring performers, was a shock. “[The other students] were all very ambitious and I didn’t know anything about ambition until I got there,” she says. It took a little time to adjust. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was a terrible student. I was going shopping, doing anything but studying.”

5. Her stage debut was followed by tragedy

She soon excelled, of course, and made her stage debut at Covent Garden in 1970, in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. “I’d never seen a performance of Figaro, never heard the opera, and I learned it without any knowledge whatsoever.” Te Kanawa had to learn lyrics in Italian, a language she didn’t speak, but fortunately she’s “a natural parrot for languages”. The performance was a success, but it was swiftly followed by sadness. “My mother died the week after I made it to Covent Garden,” says Te Kanawa.

6. She nearly missed her first big break

By 1974, Te Kanawa was on a path to operatic success and was cast as an understudy in Verdi’s Otello at the prestigious Metropolitan Opera in New York. But she wasn’t an understudy for long. On the production’s opening day, she got a call. “My agent said, ‘You’re on.’ ‘On what?’ ‘You’re on.’” It was 11am and the performance started at 2.30pm. And it was being broadcast live on the radio. “I got into a taxi and said, ‘Can you take me to the Metropolitan Opera?’ and he said, ‘Where’s that?’” She was rushed on stage so quickly she had no time to feel nervous. “I was more nervous in the taxi because he didn’t know where he was going!”

7. She’s never been more nervous than at Charles and Diana’s wedding

Te Kanawa was stunned when she was asked to perform at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. “My agent said, ‘Charlie wants you to sing at his wedding’,” she says. “'Charlie who?’” She says she definitely felt anxiety this time. “I was pretty horrendously nervous, but I knew how to cope with that.” What didn’t phase her was the fame that followed appearing on the biggest television event in history. “I knew I was well-known, but I didn’t take it on,” she says. “I just went back into my world.”

8. Singing keeps her soul happy

Te Kanawa performing in 2009

The pressure of her career “took a toll on my private life,” says Te Kanawa, but music has always been her way to release. “Singing keeps my soul happy,” she says. “If I was unhappy at home, which happened on a few occasions, I could just go off and sing and nobody knew, which was nice. I thought, ‘I fooled the world, because I can still sing. I can produce what I do and still be heart-sore inside.’”

9. She loves singing Barry White and Amy Winehouse

Te Kanawa, now 80, retired in 2017, which she says was not a difficult decision: “I’d planned it two or three years before.” Retirement does not mean she no longer sings, only that she now does it purely for herself. “I sing in the car a lot,” she laughs. “It keeps me awake. I sing along with Barry White. I don’t mind Amy Winehouse either. Back To Black, I rather like that song. It bounces me along on my long journey back down to Auckland.”