Kiri Te Kanawa

Biography Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (Soprano) Kiri Te Kanawa became a global star almost overnight after her sensational debut as the Countess in “Le Nozze di Figaro” in 1971 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. She quickly rose to the forefront of the international opera scene and is now one of the leading international sopranos. At the time of her opera debut, she already had ample experience as a concert singer and in the recording studio, feeling as comfortable in front of cameras as she did on stage. She constantly expands her repertoire as a concert soloist and is a sought-after singer across a wide spectrum of musical genres. As an opera singer, Kiri Te Kanawa is familiar to audiences in leading opera houses worldwide – Covent Garden, Metropolitan, Chicago Lyric Opera, Opéra Paris, Sydney Opera House, Vienna State Opera, La Scala, San Francisco, Munich, and Cologne. Her repertoire includes the great female roles of the Austro-German school: Mozart’s Countess (Le Nozze di Figaro), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), and Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Richard Strauss’s Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier), Countess (Capriccio), and the title role in Arabella, as well as Italian roles such as Mimì (La Bohème), Violetta (La Traviata), Elisabetta (Don Carlo), Desdemona (Otello), and the French roles Marguerite (Faust) and Micaëla (Carmen). Her strong stage presence and the beauty of her voice also shine on the concert stage, accompanied by the world’s leading orchestras: Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony, and Boston Symphony – under the baton of conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Sir Colin Davis, Charles Dutoit, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, to name but a few. Since the memorable “Figaro” performance, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has built up an extensive repertoire, ranging from opera classics to songs by French, German, and English composers, plus a rich selection of American songs from Kern to Gershwin. CDs of Italian and French opera arias are also available, as is her globally acclaimed “Rosenkavalier” Marschallin, in a recording with Bernard Haitink as conductor, as well as the role of the Woodbird in Wagner’s “Siegfried,” also conducted by Bernard Haitink, as part of EMI Classics’ famous “Ring” cycle. Born in New Zealand in 1944 to an Irish mother and a Maori father, Kiri Te Kanawa had already won all the singing competitions in the South Pacific by the age of twenty and had also made her first recordings – which is unusual even for a prima donna. She continued her studies with Vera Rozsa at the London Opera Centre and debuted at the Covent Garden Opera as one of the Flower Maidens in Wagner’s “Parsifal.” Sir Colin Davis noticed her and arranged for her international breakthrough as the “Figaro” Countess. Kiri Te Kanawa performs in a wide variety of venues, from the intimate settings of Glyndebourne, Tanglewood, and Ravinia, to the massive arena of Verona, the Hollywood Bowl, at festivals in Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg, as well as in the desert of the Australian Outback. As a soloist at the live broadcast of Prince Charles’s wedding in 1981 at St Paul’s Cathedral, she had the largest television audience ever reached by a singer (an estimated over 600 million viewers). The event significantly contributed to her fame. She achieved another record on a tour of Australia and New Zealand, thrilling an audience of 140,000 people at an open-air concert in Auckland. To welcome the new millennium in New Zealand, she gave a concert on the beach of her birthplace, Gisborne, which was broadcast in 55 countries. In 1982, Kiri Te Kanawa was awarded the Order of the British Empire. She holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Oxford, Dundee, Warwick, Auckland, Waikato, Nottingham, Chicago, Durham, and Cambridge, and is an honorary fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, and Wolfson College, Cambridge. In 1990, she received the “Order of Australia.” In the “Queen’s Birthday Honours List” of 1995, she was awarded the coveted “Order of New Zealand.” Kiri Te Kanawa celebrated her 25th stage anniversary in 1994, along with her 50th birthday, at a spectacular gala concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In 1999, Kiri Te Kanawa released her most personal album to date, “Maori Songs,” which contains songs from her childhood that evoke the magic and mysteries of her homeland, New Zealand. In 2001, the “Best of Kiri” album was released, showcasing for the first time on a single CD the full breadth of her repertoire, from pop songs to musicals to classical music. This CD immediately entered the German classical charts. In October 2003, a double CD featuring her most beautiful EMI recordings was released in the “Best of Singers” series. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, who has been among the top ranks of opera stars for more than 30 years, celebrated her 60th birthday on March 6, 2004. In the EMI Classics series “Legend,” which for the first time combines both CD & DVD media, a portrait of the singular artist was also released in June 2004. Kiri Te Kanawa’s album “Dame Kiri and Friends” was released on both CD and DVD in May 2005 – the gala concert from February 28, 2004, in Auckland, New Zealand, held to mark the founding of the “Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation” to support and promote young New Zealand artists. In early December 2006, another album will be released under the motto “Hit Composer Meets Mega-Diva”: Karl Jenkins has teamed up with Kiri Te Kanawa, resulting in 16 hypnotic tracks. For “Kiri sings Karl – Songs of Mystery and Enchantment” – the title of the CD – Jenkins has arranged classical works by Beethoven, Chopin, and Fauré, but a special emphasis is placed on South American music and sound experiments such as the multitrack process, where Kiri Te Kanawa’s voice is sometimes nine-layered to create an impressive “Kiri Choir.” The singer is accompanied by the Adiemus Singers and the London Symphony Orchestra. The program will also be featured in the Carreras Gala 2006 on December 14 on ARD. Status: November 2006 For more information, please visit www.emiclassics.de EMI Classics Germany Press & Promotion – Stephanie Haase – Im Mediapark 8a, 50670 Köln Tel: 0221–4902–2428 Fax: 0221–4902–3428 e-mail: promoclassics@emimusic.de www.emiclassics.de · www.emi-promotionservices.de