Concert Preview: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa with NZSO, Vector Arena

Dame Kiri is passionate about helping young singers ... unless they're YouTube copyists. Photo / Supplied

Tonight Dame Kiri Te Kanawa heads the bill with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the Vector Arena in a gala concert that also features Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Kawiti Waetford.

Hyperbole has been ringing around town for weeks. The venue's website touts the event as "the hottest ticket in New Zealand", advising that its generous three-hour running time is "approximate and open to artistic interpretation".

The orchestra is marketing it as "an evening of glittering spectacle", promising that Dame Kiri will take us through "an itinerary of great classics, popular favourites and some of the treasures of New Zealand's own musical heritage".

The lady herself is remarkably down to earth about the whole thing.

"It's a fun night before the rugby, which is what we're all interested in," she says.

"Hopefully, it will be a nice big crowd because that's what it's all about. It will be entertaining for a wide audience and we're all hoping it's going to be the All Blacks who win. Everyone's a little worried over here."

"Over here" is Melbourne, where Dame Kiri has been preparing for a recital with baritone Phillip Rhodes and pianist Terence Dennis. A week before, the singer and her pianist thrilled a Honolulu audience with a classy programme that ranged from Vivaldi and Handel through Liszt and Reynaldo Hahn to Jake Heggie's setting of the Maria Callas monologue from Terrence McNally's play Masterclass.

"Thank goodness there's a composer like Jake around," she sighs. "He's such a good little writer, putting totally singable music to beautiful words. I had dinner with him the other night and said, 'Come on Jake, write me some more please!"'

Much of Dame Kiri's energy over the past few years has gone into the masterclass circuit.

"It's a very important part of my life," she says.

"In the last two weeks, I've had 12 full hours listening to 18 singers. They're all very good at certain levels but, in Melbourne, there was a young tenor from Colombia, Carlos Barcenas, worth keeping an eye on and who will be singing in my concert tonight. That's what I'm interested in doing - bringing that cream to the top of the milk."

Dame Kiri is generous in sharing her experience with young singers.

Five years ago, she and Frederica von Stade gave a lively and illuminating masterclass at Auckland's Opera Factory, even treating the audience to a disarmingly lovely duet from Cosi fan Tutte.

She is a staunch admirer of Opera Factory's Sally Sloman.

"She is an unbelievably special person, doing it all for the love of the music and the students.

"She's the reason I keep going. While she's doing that, she feeds me with what I need. We're a tiny cog in a huge wheel but I think we can make a difference."

And tonight a chorus of Opera Factory's young singers will appear on stage alongside their patron.

Dame Kiri's own masterclass experiences as a young singer were not so happy.

"I went to one where Dame Eva Turner decided to destroy me and I never went back again," she recalls. "That didn't do me any good whatsoever. My own singing teacher was enough of a tyrant, and then there was [conductor Sir Georg] Solti ... I really had my masterclasses day after day."

After a pause for reflection, she gives her final assessment: "The delicacy of the psyche is so tender that you've got to be very careful you don't do or say the wrong thing."

Over the past seven years, the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation has played a big role in supporting young singers, one of whom, Waetford, is on stage tonight, singing Rossini's Largo al factotum and the Ka Mate war song with Tahu Rhodes.

Dame Kiri is known for her forthright opinions and we avoid subjects like the Johnny Farnham incident or popera stars.

But today her anger is directed towards "this dreadful thing called YouTube". She cites "a young Chinese tenor who's learnt everything that Jose Carreras sings from watching YouTube; he sings like Carreras - all the inflections and the phrasing - but without the voice.

"And there was one singer recently at the Met who'd learned everything from YouTube and then, when he was given something new, he couldn't sing it. He didn't have the insight and instinct to sing with his own voice, body and intelligence."

She is more positive about the need to look after the young singers. The foundation helps out with financial advice, medical bills, dress and costumes as well as singing lessons. As she comments: "Who's going to look after these singers if they don't and we don't? I had wonderful guidance, even though I was on my own a lot. I had the right singing teacher, conductor, agent, a wonderful team around me. If I occasionally went out on a limb and did something wrong, back we'd go to the right things like Mozart and Strauss."

Dame Kiri has not seen the NZSO's Grand Tour documentary, in which she was treated rudely by presenter Jeremy Wells.

She admits she was not impressed by Wells, who "seemed to have missed the bus to the wrong interview ... you can't have idiots talking about something they don't know about. It doesn't do us any good, does it? At this point of my life I don't care," she muses.

"My standing is established, people know what I do and say. But with a young person coming through, to make them look like an idiot is not good."

Performance

Who: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa with the NZ Symphony Orchestra

Where and when: Vector Arena, tonight at 6.30pm

Also: Edited excerpts from the concert will screen on Maori Television, tomorrow at 6pm for 90 minutes before the RWC live grand final