Kiri Te Kanawa is visiting South Africa at the height of her ability to draw crowds. Coenraad Visser reports
IT was with a sense of relief that one greeted Dame Kiri Te Kanawa at her first encounter with the press shortly after her arrival in Johannesburg. She currently limits her public appearances to about 18 opera performances and 20- odd recitals per year, so it was hard to believe she would make her four scheduled performances in South Africa.
Although Te Kanawa “has looked at this country for a long time”, it is not really surprising that her visit coincides with the Rugby World Cup. Her enthusiasm for the game is no secret. She recorded the theme song of the 1991 tournament, World in Union, which took the world music charts by storm. An ardent supporter of the All Blacks, she is confident that “we’re gonna whip you”. With an enchanting chuckle, she described Jonah Lomu, the New Zealand left-wing terror, as “gorgeous”, and adds that “every New Zealand girl wants to marry him”.
Many international vocal stars who visited South Africa during the last few decades did so towards the end of their careers — some having passed it. Dame Kiri is different. Her ability to pack in the crowds has never been stronger. When she sang the title role in Richard Strauss’ Arabella at the Metropolitan Opera in New York late last year, all seven performances were sold out, the first time in the Met’s history of staging this opera. At a recent lieder recital in Vienna, the ecstatic audience kept her on stage for 45 minutes after the end of her programme. Not even switching off the stage lights could dissuade the audience from demanding yet another encore.
Not bad for someone whose teachers at the London Opera Centre thought her lazy and disinterested, and who failed many auditions at Covent Garden (she remembers nine). Her career finally took off in that house in 1971 with a sensational portrayal of the Countess in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. In 1974 followed her celebrated debut at the Met as Desdemona in Verdi’s Othello.
Since then, she has been acclaimed in virtually every important opera house in the world. Her extensive repertoire ranges from Mozart to Richard Strauss, Puccini and Verdi to Bernstein, Gershwin and Jerome Kern.
Today she is a household name far beyond opera circles. In 1990, her outdoor concert in Auckland, New Zealand, attracted 140 000 people, the largest crowd ever to hear a solo artist. She caught the eye of the general public for the first time, of course, in 1981 when she sang at the wedding of Britain’s Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. The prince thought that, in her unusual dress and hat, she resembled a “wonderful canary or budgerigar”. Clive James, writing in The Observer, described it as “what may have been the last surviving example of the Maori national
Cinema audiences will remember her as the ravishingly beautiful Donna Elvira in Joseph Losey’s Don Giovanni. She remembers Losey as a “gentle man, who left you to do what you wanted to”. Although Losey admired her dramatic instincts, he remembers that “her big problem was that when she wasn’t in the forefront of the action, she’d tend to lose concentration and look lost”.
At 51, she is not sure how much longer her voice will last. But she does know that she will retire in time, so that she doesn’t put her audiences “through agony”. Right now, her voice maintains its ravishing, creamy beauty, even if recent recordings like La Traviata show tiny imperfections. Small wonder that Sir Georg Solti never wasted any time in describing hers as the most beautiful voice he has ever
The only jarring note she sounded at her meeting with the press was when she was asked to comment on the criticism, heard in opera centres such as London, that the top singers’ high fees place tickets out of reach of all but the wealthy. Twirling her pearls, she replied: “Some people spend a lot of money on expensive meals; others buy expensive cars. If you want to hear opera, we’re there.”
Although no South African singers will benefit from her experience and knowledge in master classes, she did donate her services for a recital last Saturday to raise money for President Nelson Mandela’s Children’s Fund. And, according to Dr Ivan May, assistant general manager of Nedbank, this sponsor will give tickets to some “developmental singers” unable to fork out R200 to attend one of her recitals.
At 8pm on Sunday at the Nico Malan in Cape Town, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa will perform works by Berlioz, Copland, Granados, Mozart, Strauss and Vivaldi