Critics warm but not excited over Dame Kiri

By KEVIN NORQUAY

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's return to London's Covent Garden has attracted warm but unexcited reviews, one headed "Time Takes its Toll on Dame Kiri".

While Dame Kiri, who turned 58 on Tuesday, attracted spontaneous applause from a packed Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, her reviews had little of the hyperbole that brought her to world attention on the same stage in 1971.

"One could bemoan the fact that her singing rarely rose above a mezzoforte for the whole evening, but she has lost none of her phenomenal technique, exploited no more daringly than in the long legato lines of Rachmaninov's wordless Vocalise," Matthew Rye said in the Daily Telegraph.

In the Guardian, critic Tim Ashley harked back to the old days under the headline "Time Takes its Toll on Dame Kiri."

"We should always remember that when Te Kanawa was at her peak, her voice was, quite simply, among the most beautiful in the world. Her Covent Garden recital revealed a decline, perhaps inevitable, in vocal quality, though not in technical assurance."

Contrast that to 1971, when she sang the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro. "Such a Countess Almaviva," wrote the Financial Times critic Andrew Porter, "as I have never heard before."

Dame Kiri had a similarly successful debut at the Met in New York when, on only three hours' notice, she took over for an ill Teresa Stratas as Desdemona in Otello, and again received rave reviews.

The peak of her fame came in 1981 when she sang at the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Dame Kiri once compared the singing voice to a salami, saying a little sliver was lost every time it was used until eventually it ran out.

- NZPA