Dame Kiri won’t sing in public again

OPERA star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa says she will never sing in public again.

The 73-year-old soprano said she gave her final performance a year ago, but had decided not to announce it until now.

New Zealander Dame Kiri sang Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim to a global audience of 600 million at the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981. She said she never sang it again, or listened to it, after Diana died in 1997.

Dame Kiri told Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday: ‘I don’t want to hear my voice when I’m teaching young singers’, adding that she doesn’t even sing in the shower.