Top Songs By Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
More albums from Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's Popular Music Videos
Chants d'Auvergne: No. 2, Bailero
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Capriccio: Aria "Morgen mittag um elf..."
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Dale Travis & San Francisco Opera
Chants d'Auvergne: Brezairola
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
About Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Artist Biography
The velvet voice of lyric soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has enhanced music by Mozart, Strauss, Verdi and many other composers both inside and outside the opera world. Born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron in Gisborne, New Zealand, in 1944, she was adopted into a Maori family. She studied with famed vocal trainer Dame Sister Mary Leo Niccol in Auckland, and her 1965 recording of “The Nun’s Chorus” from Johann Strauss II’s Casanova (arr. Ralph Benatzky, 1928) became New Zealand’s first gold record. The London Opera Centre accepted her as a student without an audition, and she made her stage debut as Second Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (1791) in 1969. Her 1971 Covent Garden debut as the melancholy Countess in Le nozze di Figaro (1786) made Te Kanawa an overnight sensation. She expanded her repertoire during the ’70s, making her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1974 as the last-minute substitute for Teresa Stratas’ Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello (1887). In 1981, Te Kanawa rocketed to global fame after singing at Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s televised wedding. Now the “people's diva”, she triumphed as the Marschallin in Bernard Haitink’s 1990 Dresden recording of Der Rosenkavalier (1911), which she considered to be one of her greatest achievements. Te Kanawa retired following a 2016 concert in Australia and now devotes her time to mentoring young singers.
Hometown
Gisborne, New Zealand
Genre
Classical
Similar to: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
Discover more music and artists similar to Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, like Dame Joan Sutherland, Renée Fleming, Renata Tebaldi