Kiri's low note at the royal wedding

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa was dressed to impress at Prince Charles and Lady Diana's wedding - except for one small detail.

The great New Zealand soprano had forgotten her knickers in her rush to get to the ceremony, which was watched by 700 million people on live television in 1981.

This is one of the revelations in a book about the rise and fall of Covent Garden's Royal Opera House, which gave Dame Kiri her break 31 years ago.

Her arrival in the early 1970s was considered "a gift from heaven" for the famous London opera house.

Covent Garden - The Untold Story says Dame Kiri had been "knocking around London for three years" before being taken in by staffer Colin Davis.

He offered her a starring role in The Marriage of Figaro.

The book describes the young Kiri as a plain-spoken girl who lived with her Australian husband Des and commuted daily from outer Surrey to Covent Garden by train.

At Covent Garden's Royal Opera House on the night of December 1, 1971, Dame Kiri "knocked the place flat". She was "serene, beautiful and tonally secure". By Act Three the applause was overwhelming.

The press proclaimed the birth of a star - a teenage goddess, the book says.

In April 1981 Dame Kiri received a call asking her to sing at Prince Charles' wedding. "Charles who?" she said. The Prince came to see her in Don Giovanni in July and found her "wonderfully sexy and seductive", the book says.

On July 29, Dame Kiri sang Handel's Let the Bright Seraphim at the royal service. The book says she was well aware of the worldwide exposure it gave her.

But by May 1983, while rehearsing for a Puccini role, she seemed "so sullen and unprepared" that conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli threatened to walk out a week before opening night.

"He tried to get me fired," raged Dame Kiri.

She met sports impresario Mark McCormack on a golf course and began a new career.

McCormack believed she would be better off singing concert arias in large arenas rather than fixed-fee operas in a 2000-seat opera house. He set up outdoor shows in Australian vineyards and tennis courts.

"We made Kiri more money than she had ever made before," he said.

By 1998, Dame Kiri was keeping well away from the refurbished Royal Opera House which had been lurching through deeply troubled financial times.

She said she would never sing again with the company that had launched her brilliant career.

"Covent Garden? I don't think they even know my telephone number," she told author Norman Lebrecht.

- NZPA