Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, at home in the Bay of Islands. Photo / Jae Frew, New Zealand Woman's Weekly ONE TIME USE ONLY
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa opens up over lunch on her homecoming, her husband and family, a life of adventure … and a hilarious bedroom encounter with a Formula 1 star.
State Highway 12 rolls through hillsides and farmland in Northland – hair-raisingly narrow with sharp turns and pockmarked with filled-in and newly forming cavities. It’s about as far from London’s Covent Garden or New York’s Met as you’ll find, and about the only place where The Voice now performs.
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa says she only sings in the car these days. That patchy detour road between Auckland and the Bay of Islands is now her stage. That – and when it’s clear of slips and open – State Highway 1 over the Brynderwyn Hills.
“I’ve got to sing to keep myself awake to get to Auckland,” says one of our greatest living New Zealanders. “I do! It’s four hours. I’ve got everything - I’ve got Carpenters, I’ve got Barry White, I’ve even got Amy Winehouse … Back to Black!
“You’ve got to keep yourself going. It’s a nasty road. It’s the lorry drivers, lots of the logging trucks shouldn’t be on the road – or only on certain days.
“I’ve had a logging truck behind me going honk, honk, honk! I just stayed in my place. Then we got to the bottom of the hill, and I thought I’m going to be able to take off now - which I did.”
It will take more than a road-raging truckie to deter Dame Kiri, 79, now happily, blissfully back living in New Zealand after more than 50 years in the UK and a lifetime building her internationally acclaimed career – one of the most famous opera sopranos in history – in which she performed on the world’s biggest stages, mixed with royalty, trained and protected that voice constantly, and built a circle of dear friends, many of them household names.
She says over lunch at the Duke of Marlborough Hotel in Russell: “I’m still a little girl from New Zealand, I’ve never forgotten that.”
Her life, in some respects, has come full circle. From her beloved home nestled nearby, she and her very private husband – “my English rose” – have an outdoor playground at their doorstep. A huge property with their four dogs and the Bay of Islands right there for fishing and adventure.
Seven decades ago, that little girl and her father Thomas (Tom) Te Kanawa – she was adopted by him and his wife Nell when she was an infant – would go hunting and fishing at Lake Taupō.
That love of the outdoors endures – as does a sense of adventure and fun. Just about every media profile on Dame Kiri mentions a coolness and wariness with the press, but I suspect that is partly due to the circumstances of a particular time – still working, protecting her privacy, her voice and her career. These days – and certainly today – she is relaxed and cheerful.
And very happy, “with no reservations”.
Right now, she says, her boat is getting fixed. “I don’t know why things go wrong, but they go wrong.” The weather hasn’t been great anyway but when she and her husband do venture out, it’s for marlin and gem fish. “My husband smokes it, which is very nice.”
As we sit down for lunch, the Duke hotel management has set aside a special table on the deck for us, with a bottle of complimentary Pol Roger on ice, and, shortly, a plate of Parua Bay oysters.
“I do love oysters,” says Dame Kiri, but, she quickly adds, she needs to be careful not to “pig out”.
She has chosen the venue today, a favourite spot for her and a special place, I tell her, for me. It’s six years since my wedding here, with the reception at the very same spot.
We know little about Dame Kiri’s own husband, other than he’s British. He’s not at lunch today and is intensely private. “He’s a good, good person. You know, through all these many years that we’ve been together, there’s never been a photo of me with him anywhere, anywhere. We’ve seen the back of him but never the front, which is very sweet.”
She adores him. “He’s a darling person – he’s my English Rose.”
The couple are tight, working around the home and property, gardening, cooking, and fishing. He also loves making wood piles, which sounds to me like a very British hobby.
“We’re just going to enjoy what we can enjoy. Nothing gets in the way of just being happy. There’s much to be happy about and not complaining. If you’re complaining, you’re not going forward.”
Another reason she’s so happy – indeed, a big reason as to why she uprooted her life in the UK and made the pilgrimage home after 54 years – is her grandson Luther, now 5. He’s also a reason for the frequent visits to Auckland, where Kiri’s son, Tom, and his partner, Zeera, live. “He’s just started his new school – I’m waiting to see pictures.”
“He’s very intelligent. He calls me grandma. I’d say something to him and he says ‘I know that grandma … I know that’. Very much in charge.”
In his biography Parky, famous UK chat-show host Michael Parkinson wrote of introducing Dame Kiri at an open-air concert in the UK.
“She had sung a sublime version of Summertime, I asked her what was going through her mind as she created a sound of such purity and beauty. She said, ‘Halfway through the song, I saw three ducks flying across my line of vision and I thought, I wish I’d brought my gun’.”
Dame Kiri undoubtedly has a mischievous spirit. Over lunch, she laughs as she fantasises about buying a flash SUV like the one a visitor had at her house recently. “They make a lot of noise. Imagine me with an SUV going to the tip with all the wine bottles, all the beer bottles, all the cans - can you see it!”
There is a vast range of TV and video highlights from her career – from her beautiful 22-year-old voice on a Rotorua marae to the operatic halls of the world. And more light-heartedly, from playing golf with Placido Domingo and a duet with Dame Edna Everage on the Parkinson show, to kissing Paul Holmes during a television interview – “sometimes I used to do that when I try to shut them up”, she told TVNZ’s Alison Mau, years later.
She respected Holmes as a journalist and broadcaster she could trust. “He was a special man.”
She remembers that interview and the kiss. They’d been in London on a balcony, and someone – neighbours’ kids, apparently – fired an air rifle over their heads. They retreated inside.
She knew Barry Humphries reasonably well, too. She remembers he came to one of her rehearsals because he couldn’t make the show. “He just was so knowledgeable. Very, very bright, he knew his composers. I thought, oh my God. I better stop talking here because he’s so bright.”
These are circles she moved in – and still moves in, to some extent. Dame Kiri was in Melbourne for the Formula 1 Grand Prix last month to see another of her dear friends, Sir Jackie Stewart.
“He’s one of those sorts of people, you know, he gathers people together and he’s a good friend. You could be very sure that if you’re in trouble, Jackie would be there. He’s amazing.”
She remembers being invited by Stewart to a birthday bash years ago on the Hebridean Princess luxury ship.
“I was having terrible knee problems . . . eventually I was going to have to have a knee operation. Anyway, I fell badly and I went back to the boat eventually and went to bed.
“I was just so ill with this pain of having hurt my knees, and [F1 driver] Mark Webber comes and gives me some massage on my knee.
“I have this wonderful letter from Jackie saying, ‘well, I’m not quite sure what Mark Webber was doing in your bedroom. I do hope that whatever he was manipulating, it wasn’t too bad’. This gorgeous letter.
“I saw Mark at the Grand Prix [last month] and I said, Mark, I’ve got pictures of you and me in bed together. He said, oh, ‘give it to me!’ We were all in bed together with Jackie, his sons, his daughters-in-law … everyone was in! It was sweet.”
They’ve just made a film about Stewart - simply titled Stewart. People had told him he was stupid, and wouldn’t amount to anything, says Dame Kiri. “They were wrong.”
Stewart, who could not read or write, was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 41. He has famously said it was like extending an arm to a drowning man.
Dame Kiri says: “We’ve all got a bit of that in us, I think.
“I think I’m slightly that way when I look at a thing,” she says, explaining, for example, a how-to guide. “How you look at, what is it, how to do something? Woooo … I think, ‘I can’t do that’.”
A few days later I see Sir Richard Branson posted a similar sentiment about dyslexia on social media: “‘Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.’ Albert Einstein is often credited with this wonderful quote, but it may have come from a variety of different sources. It takes all sorts of people with all sorts of talents and skills to create positive things in the world.”
Dame Kiri told the Woman’s Weekly last year that if she could revisit her 16-year-old self, she’d insist that she wasn’t being pulled out of class all the time for music lessons. “I ended up with no education. I basically educated myself but in the first years of my career, I couldn’t even write a letter because I’d never had time to sit in class. In those early years, I saved letters from all sorts of people. Any thank-you letters I saved and tried to copy what they’d said in order to write a decent letter.”
Dame Kiri is passionate about education, ensuring children have the right start in life, and are given opportunities by the age of 12 or 13 to develop their dreams. That’s where she wants to see focus and investment.
“That’s when we need to capture children to get them interested in whatever they’re getting interested in. So they don’t go off the rails and go through the cracks.”
She lives by that mantra herself, having set up the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation in 2004, a helping hand – with mentoring, financial support, career assistance – for our brightest, most aspiring singers. The foundation has already helped about 160 young singers, including shining star and protege Phillip Rhodes.
“The first thing I ever said about the foundation was that I just want to see a Māori boy or Māori person on stage somewhere important. It was so thrilling to see Phillip there.”
Covid was particularly hard for the young singers, like a “house of cards” many of them had lost contracts, she says. The foundation gave its then intake of 18 an £800 a month stipend to keep them going.
Dame Kiri spent her professional lifetime having to protect her voice – The Voice – every day. At one point it was insured, although – amazingly – she cancelled only one event in 20 years, after a bout of laryngitis.
Otherwise, she had to be careful around air conditioning, travelling and social events. “I was always protecting myself. If it was more than six or eight people get out quick … you know, can I leave early? Just go into a party, say hello to the necessary people and get out. I was always like that.
“If only I had worn masks through the whole of my career, it would have been much safer. I would have done those long flights with my own humidity cooking, so to speak. I would have been able to breathe my own air.”
As the lunchtime crowd builds at The Duke, our attentive waiter, Nigel, brings out the same mains we’ve selected – the renowned Duke dish, the seafood chowder.
Dame Kiri jokes with Nigel – “It better be better than mine! I have a very good recipe.” Some time later, towards the end of our meal, the verdict is in. “I think this IS better than mine.”
One suspects if you’re a friend of Kiri, you’re a friend for life – although the opposite might also be true. Cross her, and you’re just as likely to find yourself excommunicated. She’s clearly not one to mess with; doesn’t suffer fools, as some media have noted over the decades.
She avoids social media and has a healthy suspicion of strangers – for example, she’s extremely cautious about having any selfies taken. They could end up anywhere, Photoshopped “in the wrong way”, she observes.
Most New Zealanders are polite and laid-back. She’s recognised constantly, but Kiwis will give her space. “The sweet thing is they try not to look and they treat you like they don’t know you - it’s very nice. They are gentle.
“In England, this woman said to me ‘You know, you look like Kiri Te Kanawa’. And I said, ‘Well, I am’. She said, ‘Well, lucky you!’”
One of Dame Kiri’s great friends and foundation board members, Paul Brewer, is part of our lunch group and he tells the story of how a woman saw Dame Kiri on a pedestrian crossing and was so flustered that she curtsied as she passed her.
This isn’t altogether surprising given she is about as close to royalty as any New Zealander gets.
Dame Kiri has been a genuine friend to the royals for decades. She burst to prominence for most New Zealanders, of course, with her performance of Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim at Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding in 1981. She’d been invited to perform by Charles, then the patron of Covent Garden.
She has spoken in the past of her pride in performing in St Paul’s Cathedral. “Through the whole of the six minutes of the aria, I kept thinking ‘I hope you’re watching New Zealand’. I just was so proud to be a New Zealander.”
We were indeed watching; the world was watching. More than 600 million viewers tuned into the event. The wedding cemented a love affair with Diana (that still plays out posthumously) – and with Kiri. She was brought to the fore of Kiwis’ consciousness.
“The most stupid thing I did, looking back, I was singing two operas side by side with a day off and another two operas side by side with a day off. And it happened two, four, six, eight times.
“And then I had to do the Royal Wedding within a very short time. I thought ‘I’m not going to have any voice left’.
“So, I just locked myself away for 24 hours and just shut down ... for days actually, and stayed quiet, so I had some sort of voice by the time of the wedding. It worked; it did work. But my gosh, you know, it was tight. It was quite a stress.”
Her bright outfit was also subject to secrecy. She told the outfitter that the most important part would be from the waist up, knowing that would be the focus of the television cameras. “I said it was for something special.”
While she sang her way into our hearts that day, in reality, Dame Kiri was a superstar well before the wedding – astounding the world in 1971 with her performance as the Countess in the Marriage of Figaro at Covent Garden. Critics described the discovery of a “goddess”.
It took a lot of practice, practice, practice to get to that point. She auditioned nine times for Covent Garden before the call-up. Throughout her career, she kept training and was always learning. She never considered the job done.
Dame Kiri was at the Queen’s funeral last year – she was relatively close to the monarch, to the extent she even travelled with her in the back of the car to church on two occasions. She remembers various anecdotes – the Queen playing cards at Sandringham, rolling up her sleeves in the kitchen, making a salad. Through it all, relaxed but exquisitely dressed.
“I hope we keep the Royal Family forever,” Dame Kiri told the Woman’s Weekly last year. “They’re wonderful and why would we change? What other leader would I look up to? With all the good and bad things in this world, the monarchy has always been stable. Yes, it has had its ups and downs but it has been stable. I can’t think of anything else that would take its place.”
She has not harboured any political aspirations herself. “I’d be too outspoken.”
We met in the days leading up to King Charles’ coronation, and I told her I’d have thought she’d have been invited. “I wouldn’t expect to be, no. It’s gone down to 2000 [invited guests], I think. There are more important people.”
She’d have loved to have been there, of course. Instead, she was contemplating hosting the neighbours. “We’ll sit down ... put the food out, a nice sort of smorgasbord, the neighbours might come and watch with us.”
She is travelling a fair bit – those road trips to Auckland, flights to Wellington, and next week to the UK to catch up with friends before the Cardiff Singer of the World competition, of which she is patron. It is a massive competition. She’s also been invited to Rarotonga for the first time to see Rarotonga Opera; she’s keen to go.
There’s also a trip to Australia soon for her daughter Toni’s wedding.
Although she loves being home, she misses England. Having spent 54 years there, her circle of friends is wide. The shopping here is not quite the same as London. “Sometimes it would be nice if there was a John Lewis or a Peter Jones down the road.”
But again, no complaints. Happiness today is a seafood chowder at The Duke and a view across to Waitangi and Paihia.
After such a remarkable career that took her around the globe, I ask about her memories, and how often she reflects. “It sort of intermingles, you know, there’s something that comes up and it reminds me of things. Photos are there that I’ve forgotten. Not that I’ve forgotten for long.”
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