Dame Kiri takes a
The famous Kiwi talks to Tracy Watkins about why she’s driven to give the next generation of opera singers a leg up.
Sat in the lobby of the James Cook Hotel in Wellington, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is instantly recognisable; she’s been a household name for as long as most of us can remember, so famous that she sang at the wedding of Di and Charles, her voice heard by hundreds of millions of viewers around the world.
She was already acclaimed internationally as a world-class opera singer by then, a star of the theatre circuit and more at home in Manhattan, London or Rome than Wellington.
When she announced her decision to retire, a Daily Mail headline trumpeted that the then-77-year-old had quit Britain to spend ‘‘her last summers’’ with her grandson in New Zealand after they were kept apart by Covid.
Except Dame Kiri doesn’t look much like a woman who is contemplating her final summers.
She flew down from Kerikeri the day before our meeting – her flight, like so many others these days, was delayed, so it’s been a rush visit. But she’s used to that. Due to celebrate her 79th birthday tomorrow, Dame Kiri has spent most of the past 50 years or so living out of a suitcase, and shuttling in and out of airports.
That part of her life – like the performing, like the life she left behind in England, is over.
She gets hugely homesick for her friends and for England but she doesn’t miss life on the road, she says.
‘‘I look at those suitcases and I think I just want to put them down a deep hole.’’
And there’s ‘‘this’’ instead, says Dame Kiri, and her family, and it’s enough. ‘‘This’’ is the job of nurturing the next generation of opera singers – some of them already stars, like renowned baritone Phillip Rhodes, the exciting young singer seated beside her in the hotel lobby.
Rhodes is the reason we’re meeting on a Saturday morning in Wellington. The previous evening, Wellingtonians were treated to a performance by Rhodes and up-and-coming singers, including Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono, Samson Setu and Michaela Cadwgan.
There were canape´ s and wine and a Q and A session with Rhodes, whose backstory is the stuff of movie scripts: A foster kid, who overcame an abusive background to find singing and stardom in the elite world of opera.
Dame Kiri was there too in a place that has become quite familiar to her since her return to New Zealand – the audience.
There are no more performances in her; no plans to come out of retirement, not even for an informal get-together in her hometown of Kerikeri, she insists.
She likens it to the agelessness of Marilyn Monroe after her early death; ‘‘She’s never going to change, is she? And that’s what I want people to remember – there’s my voice, it’s never going to change.’’
If she does feel moved to sing, ‘‘I’ll do it in the car so no-one can hear me’’.
‘‘I’m done, I’ve moved on and you’re never going to hear another sound out of me because that’s what I want everyone to remember.’’
Besides, she’s living through the next generation of singers, like
Rhodes, says
Dame Kiri.
‘‘I’m enjoying what I’m hearing and just . . . [doing] things that I can help with and just be with them and they love me being there. That’s the pleasure I’m getting at the moment.’’
It’s easier to understand why
Dame Kiri has put singing behind her when she and Rhodes talk about the sheer discipline and hard work that it takes to preserve the sort of vocal magic that lifts an audience.
While singers like FonotiFuimaono
are just starting out, Hawke’s Bay-born Rhodes has already carved out a name for himself on the international stage. Dame Kiri is a big part of that: She phoned him the morning after he took out the prestigious Lexus Song Quest in 2007 and told him that if he wanted to make it internationally he should ‘‘follow my
lead’’.
She has been there for
Rhodes ever since; Rhodes was announced last week as the first Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation Laureate, in recognition of his outstanding achievements as a classical singer, both in New Zealand and overseas.
The laureate is worth $65,000, which in monetary terms is a lot, but – says Rhodes, who is due to fly to Scotland later this month to start rehearsals for a production of Carmen – in terms of the difference it will make to his work and his life, will mean even more.
‘‘For me, in this profession, it costs a lot to be good and I’m at the stage now where I’m working constantly and I have to do so much work to pay just for life, just to do the next job. This laureate helps me to be a bit more time-rich, and puts more emphasis into going into work at a higher standard.’’
This is why Dame Kiri set up the
Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation some 20 years ago. To nurture and promote young performers coming through from New Zealand – the next generation of Dame Kiris and, now, the next generation of Phillip Rhodes.
Both are excited that the foundation is working with so many young people who are already showing huge promise.
After three years of Covid, the need has never been more pressing, say the pair.
For a lot of promising youngsters, the past three years hit pause on their singing careers. Theatres everywhere were closed, forcing the industry into a hiatus and a state of huge uncertainty.
There is a worry for some young ones that they may have missed the boat on an international career.
‘‘It’s been a difficult time for everyone in the industry,’’ says Rhodes.
‘‘Particularly
‘I’m done, I’ve moved on and you’re never going to hear another sound out of me because that’s what I want everyone to remember.’ DAME KIRI TE KANAWA
the ones expecting to come out of university and go into work, with Covid happening and, for almost two years, theatre doors being shut.
There is a huge gap in the development of a lot of those singers and a weight on their shoulders that no-one else has had. They haven’t been able to work because they weren’t allowed to work . . . as opposed to being out there fighting to get work. It’s a very different state of mind.’’
The pandemic and lockdowns have affected them mentally as well, says Dame Kiri. And she knows better than most, as someone who lived under the huge pressure of having to constantly perform at a high level, how much that can affect their ability to keep going.
‘‘Their confidence has dropped . . . and in our world, confidence is what we need most. We need a big dose nearly every day.
‘‘If our confidence is shattered . . . it’s hard to pick up. I’ve been in a strange place sometimes – you go into a room and you think ‘this is nice, it’s dark in here and no one can touch me’. The phone would ring and I would say ‘I’m terribly busy’.
‘‘I went through that – I know what these kids have gone through: They’ve been locked away, they can’t move out of their room, and they’ve only got their device.’’
Even in better times, it’s not an easy life, both agree.
‘‘It is lonely . . . you have temporary friends,’’ says Rhodes. ‘‘The production will go for about six weeks. You’ll make some new friends, you’ll meet some old ones. That will be your social time, in work.
And when rehearsal is finished you go back to your hotel room, you protect yourself from all the bugs, the cold germs, even from talking . . . You do what you can do to preserve your voice.’’
Even surviving rehearsals these days can be mentally stressful for singers.
‘‘They go so long and they are getting longer and longer. Directors want nine weeks, 10 weeks, 11 weeks to put on a show that amazing directors used to do in three weeks,’’ says Rhodes.
And then there are moments, says Dame Kiri, like Rhodes’ performance in Wellington, which uplifted the audience. ‘‘It was supreme and the reaction from the audience was . . . really amazing. You felt, ‘oh my God, I just heard something that was really special’. It was just stunningly beautiful. I don’t think I could have done it better.’’
That’s what drives the top performers to keep going.
For Dame Kiri, it is also a reminder of why the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation is needed, and why her efforts to nurture the next generation of talent in New Zealand matter.
And so, no regrets – though there are still moments of huge homesickness – for her friends, and for the UK, her home for so many decades.
‘‘I keep watching Midsomer Murders and going ‘ohhhh’,’’ she sighs.
‘‘If I was 20 years younger I’d be very upset; but I’m not . . . and my life is now family.’’
This is the time with her grandson – and the weddings of her son and daughter are coming up. ‘‘So I’ve got a lot of things to look forward to. Family things, which I didn’t have so much. I had family but I was always on the road – like Phillip – and it was a very lonely life.’’