Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

The velvet voice of lyric soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has enhanced music by Mozart, Strauss, Verdi, and many other composers both inside and outside the opera world. Born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron in Gisborne, New Zealand, in 1944, she was adopted into a Maori family. She studied with famed vocal trainer Dame Sister Mary Leo Niccol in Auckland, and her 1965 recording of “The Nun’s Chorus” from Johann Strauss II’s Casanova (arr. Ralph Benatzky, 1928) became New Zealand’s first gold record. The London Opera Centre accepted her as a student without an audition, and she made her stage debut as Second Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (1791) in 1969. Her 1971 Covent Garden debut as the melancholy Countess in Le nozze di Figaro (1786) made Te Kanawa an overnight sensation. She expanded her repertoire during the ’70s, making her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1974 as the last-minute substitute for Teresa Stratas’ Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello (1887). In 1981, Te Kanawa rocketed to global fame after singing at Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s televised wedding. Now the “people’s diva,” she triumphed as the Marschallin in Bernard Haitink’s 1990 Dresden recording of Der Rosenkavalier (1911), which she considered to be one of her greatest achievements. Te Kanawa retired following a 2016 concert in Australia and now devotes her time to mentoring young singers.