KEY POINTS:
New Zealand opera star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is due back in a court in Sydney next week, two years after allegedly refusing to sing with Australian John Farnham.
Dame Kiri is being sued by Australian promoters Frank Williams and Eileen Newbury of Leading Edge Events, who say she pulled out of three concerts with Farnham in Sydney and Melbourne.
Now the Daily Telegraph's Sydney Confidential column has reported the case is to head to the Supreme Court in Sydney next week, where a breach of contract case would allege Dame Kiri had refused to sing with Farnham.
The newspaper reported the case could cost Dame Kiri as much as A$300,000 ($337,230).
Farnham is one of Australia's best known pop stars, and is known as "The Voice".
He agreed after the concerts were cancelled that Dame Kiri may have found him too chatty on stage.
"There's truth to that," he said.
"Kiri is obviously a dame and I mean that with great respect," he said.
"She is probably not used to an audience being so demonstrative and demands absolute silence when she works."
Farnham was also the focus of controversy in 2005 when Prime Minister Helen Clark and her Australian counterpart John Howard pulled the plug on his plan to sing at Gallipoli commemorations.
- NZPA
