Over the next several months, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, among operadom’s most beloved voices, will be singing on what is being billed as her farewell tour. As part of it, she stops by the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall on Oct. 2 to open the Philharmonic Society’s musical season.
But Dame Kiri, as she prefers to be called, is having none of it. Reached by phone recently, the exquisitely preserved 63-year-old soprano immediately sets to correcting any impressions that a reporter may have had that this is her goodbye.
“I mean, I’m not going to go into a hole and sit there and wait for death,” she says, “No way.”
In fact, she looks at the whole farewell business as something pretty much foisted upon her.
“The thing is people (make) it into a farewell, but you know you can’t stop people doing that. They want to do it, so they sort of want you over and out and in the box. So, if that pleases them, then that’s fine.”
Dame Kiri is a crisp woman, who likes to get to the point. She answered the phone herself, and when the caller expressed (mild) surprise at this, she responded, “Who else would?,” in an almost challenging manner. Still, it takes a while to get the exact nature of her tour ironed out.
The good news is that Dame Kiri will continue to sing. The voice, she says, is in fine fettle. She intends to keep performing in concert and in recital. Though she retired from opera in 2004, with her portrayal of the title role in Los Angeles Opera’s production of Samuel Barber’s “Vanessa,” her demise has been greatly exaggerated.
“Well, I just sort of think it’s winding down,” she says. “I’ve got masses more things to do.” The current tour is more of a last visit to places she’s not sure she’ll get back to again. She leaves the door slightly open, though.
“I may never come back as far as I can make out – I won’t go back there again. Because, you know, there’s many other places in the world that I will want to be. But also, coming to California – I love California – but there’s a time when, you know, maybe I won’t come there anymore. I’ll come privately. But maybe not in this sort of capacity.”
HELPING A NEW GENERATION OF SINGERS
These days, she’s spending a lot of time working for the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation, a New Zealand-based organization designed to help budding singers as well as other musicians from that country. She describes her role as “mentor” and “guide,” not teacher. She doesn’t have a vocal studio, or give lessons. But she does offer her career advice freely when asked.
“I think the Foundation is going to take up a lot of time,” she says. “I mean, I was a whole day at it yesterday. So it’s eating into my time more and more as it develops. Because they’re many, many more young people who ask for help. So we sit down, and whether it be personal or musical or – you know, for instance, one very good singer I was working with yesterday said, ‘How many hours do I take to get over a flight?’ I said, ‘Well, how many hours is the jet lag?’ and I said, ‘That’s how many days I take to get over the flight.’ … I have to guide them this way. It’s very important. So to retire would be a silly thing, but I think just to cut back and try and help I think would be very important.”
The Foundation will also help out the young musicians financially, but Dame Kiri says she’s careful about doling out too much cash.
“It’s not huge finances at the moment, because the thing is what I’ve seen happen on so many occasions, that they get to the college, they’re paid for and they just want to go home and make babies. Well, I’m not really into the ones who want to make babies. I want the ones who want to make music.”
Her Orange County recital will feature music she’s been closely associated with during her career, including songs by Mozart, Strauss, Poulenc, Duparc and Puccini, as well as a new item, Jake Heggie’s “Final Monologue” from “Master Class.” She describes the agenda simply.
“They’re just the songs I love.”
SINGING AS HERSELF
Born in New Zealand, and carrying, as her management puts it, “the exotic blood of native Maori aristocracy” in her veins, Te Kanawa has been one of the most admired, and well known, singers of her generation. She performed worldwide in the most prestigious opera houses and made a number of bestselling records that included standard operatic as well as crossover repertoire. At the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana, she sang for a televised audience estimated at 600 million. Though celebrated for the regal poise of her stage demeanour and the shimmering elegance of her voice, she has sometimes been criticized for a certain lack of depth in her interpretations. But even her critics generally found compensation.
“We have learned not to expect particularly deep thoughts from this singer,” wrote New York Times critic Bernard Holland in 2000. “For some performers the beauty of the voice is a conduit, something that allows what is inside to come out. For Dame Kiri, the beauty is the voice itself. We may not have felt the pain of “Ach, ich fühl’s” or the confusion of the other Mozart aria, “Vado, ma dove?” but what we did hear was a singer in love with the sound of herself. The delicate Strauss encore, ‘Morgen,’ was a further suggestion that to operate on the surface is not necessarily to be shallow.”
For this reason, Dame Kiri says she enjoys singing in recital more than opera.
“I prefer presenting my own personality,” she says, “because I think if you’re singing in opera, you’re supposed to be presenting another character. So in the songs that you sing (in recital) – and of course these are songs that you love to sing – hopefully it presents who you are and how you’d like to see pure singing, an opportunity that you wouldn’t always have in opera. Because in opera you’re characterizing or you’re having to do something that’s slightly different, which is not pure singing.”
This devotion to pure singing and all around classiness actually helped land the singer in an Australian courtroom earlier this year. In the so-called “panty-throwing” lawsuit, the soprano was sued for $1.5 million for pulling out of scheduled performances with Australian pop singer John Farnam. When Dame Kiri found out that women regularly tossed their underwear at Farnam onstage, she reneged on the deal.
“I was concerned about the knickers or underpants and underwear apparel being thrown at him, and him collecting it, and obviously holding it in his hand as some trophy,” she told the court. “How could I, in my classical form, perform in that way?”
She eventually won the case, though the judge ordered her employer, Mittane Ltd., to pay $102,000 in costs.
Dame Kiri would prefer to be remembered for other things, however. Though she’s not retiring, she allowed herself a moment to consider her legacy, which, interestingly, she hopes will reflect the way she has carried herself.
“I just hope that whatever you leave behind, it helped. I think that would be important – it helped other singers, it guided them, that I did the right things.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-6811 or tmangan@ocregister.com
