Kiri Te Kanawa

21:45But what about those coloratura rolls? The coloratura, I like doing them very, very much. I remember Joan Sutherland once, she said, I got lost. She said, Rekki, get me out of this one. I can't. She got lost in one of the passages and she went round and round and round. She said, get me out of here. Are they technically very difficult then? Yes, they are. The thing is, if you get lost in one, you really are lost. You can do it in Alleluia. Right. Mozart's Alleluia. You could actually get lost in the Mozart's Hallelujah. Someone told me that, and I got a worm in my ear for it. And I had to really go back, double-check where you could get out of it, and made sure that I could get out of the Hallelujah.

22:40And you made your stage debut at Covent Garden in 1970, I believe. But then the big break came the following year when you sang the role of the Countess in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. How well do you remember that production? When I was told I was going to be singing it, I said, I can't sing that role. It's impossible. I said, just let me do Baberino. They'll be fine. And so they started teaching me. I had never seen a performance of Figaro, never heard the opera, and I learned it without any knowledge whatsoever. I just learned it as they taught it to me. Was that added pressure, given that, you know, you're playing a key role of a countess here in an opera that you knew absolutely nothing about?

23:24You know, I have no idea. Because when you're young, you just go along. And of course, everyone today, and those singers I was working with at the London Opera Centre, were far more experienced than me. They had far more languages and piano and things like that. I had none of it. But I just learned what I was taught. I was taught by great masters. I had Colin Davis and I had Ubaldo Gardini, who was the Italian coach. And I learned it for a whole year. And then the moment came. They said, well, now you know it. You know it really well. Now learn it in English. And you will sing it in New Mexico in the opera.

23:58So you will trial it in English. Then you'll come back to Covent Garden. We start all again in Italian. Were you a natural linguist, did you find? I think I was a natural parrot. I have to say that I was still parrot style because I could pick it up. I loved languages, but I didn't go into what they meant until afterwards. I mean, I would write down all the translations. All my scores of my writings with it all translated into English. But I wonder if you, because you didn't know the opera at all, you were coming to this completely fresh and new, whether you brought a fresh approach and maybe that was what stood out.

24:30Maybe I did. I did. It's quite good in some ways, but also, you know, should I have learned a lot more or would it have been better? I don't know, but everyone was pleased with it.

25:00You mentioned earlier that you'd sung that aria for Marriage of Figaro as a child. That's all I knew, yes, yes. So that bit was familiar. That was, yes.

25:11But I'd never heard a recording. We didn't have recordings. We didn't have things like that. We didn't have television when I was growing up. So you weren't learning by listening to other people. That's right, yeah. That really is quite extreme. I had no influence from anywhere. No preconception of what an opera singer should sound like. That's right. It's just so crazy, isn't it? Yet it came out right. Your career really began to take off in the early 1970s. And then it was 1974 when you were an understudy at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. And you stepped in to a role just a couple of hours before the curtain up.

25:46You were singing Desdemona in Verdi's Othello. And this was a broadcast live on radio as well. Open night, opening night. Opening night. So where were you when you got the call, when you heard that you were stepping in? Well, I was just in the apartment that I was renting. And I got a telephone call from the agent who has been looking after me. And he said, they want you at the Met. I said, what for? He said, well, you're on. I said, on what? You're on. I said, but it's 11 o 'clock. He said, yes, you're on at 2.30. It was a matinee. Yes. And so I just threw everything in. I said, I don't have a robe.

26:20He said, don't worry, I'll get you a robe. So I just got into a taxi. And I said, can you take to the Metropolitan Opera? He said, where's that? I said, just go down here. Just go straight down here and dump me out. So he just dumped me out in front of the opera house. And I ran for my life to the stage door, came through it. They were waiting for me and everything happens. Like, you know, there's a wig, there's a costume, all your clothes come off, everything comes off, everything. Makeup gets slapped on, wig gets slapped on. Boom, you're on. Quick, have a look at the stage, quick. And you're on.

26:47Were you nervous? I think so. There was no time for that. No time to be nervous? No, I was more nervous in the taxi because he didn't know where he was going. I think that was more nervous. Right. But when the curtain opened, did you feel immediately at home, this is where I should be? I think so. I think it was with John Vickers, who was just a tremendous friend, and he just said, just don't worry, we'll get through this. And I remember my very first entrance, I thought, I'm either going to fly off the stage, trip, fall or something, but I thought, I'll just go for it. So I rushed on and I stood there and I thought, I'm on, I'm on.

27:23Many understudies go through whole seasons without getting that call, but it happened to you on the very first performance then of that production. And they couldn't even pronounce my name, which was interesting. It's just strange. The role of Desdemona will be sung this afternoon by Kiri Tekanawa. Miss Tekanawa was to have made her first appearance at the Metropolitan early next month, but her performance today as Desdemona will mark her Metropolitan debut. Was it a one-off for that production? No, I sang it again. And that girl who cancelled, she came back and she did it. Sometimes, you know, people are too nervous for the first night and they sort of think, fall to peace, I can't do it, I can't do it.

28:05And then I came back, I think, maybe on the fifth or sixth performance.

28:28What effect did that performance have on your career, do you think? I think it sort of opened up the Met for me, really, and I was sort of very welcomed by the New York public and I had a very big welcome. And the fact it was broadcast live on the radio as well. Yes, of course, yes, it went all over the country. Thank you for the day by the side of the world.

28:59The next moment you have chosen was seen live by over 700 million people around the world. In 1981, you sang at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

29:18Did you already know Prince Charles? Had you sung for him before? Yes, I had definitely sung for him before, But it was in New Zealand when I actually had lunch on the Royal Yacht Britannia. And Princess Anne was there, Prince Charles and the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were there at the performance. So you remember getting that call for the Met to be an understudy. What about the call to say you're going to sing at the biggest television event of all time? Well, it was a bit strange because my agent said, oh, Charlie wants you to sing at his wedding. Can you imagine? Did you say Charlie who? People talk these things down.

29:52I'm near Charlie. I said, Charlie who? And then he said, well, Prince Charles. I said, oh, yes, and you can't say a single thing. So what do you do with that? Oh, you mean you couldn't say anything until the way you got it? Nothing. Nothing until it was announced. So I was working in Paris at the time. I thought, well, I'd better get a dress. So I just went to this place I happened to be at and I just said, I'm singing at something rather special. Could you make something? It just has to be head and shoulders. That's all it's got to be. It's nothing more. so they made me a dress to suit just my neck and my shoulders.

30:24Very brightly coloured dress, wasn't it? Yes, lots of colour. Pinks and greens and... Everything. And was it a blue hat as well? Yes. Everything seemed to... Yes. I thought it was quite sweet. Yeah, very 80s. Yeah. They're all wearing now, those hats. You sang Let the Bright Seraphim from Handel's Oratorio, Samson. So how was the piece chosen? Prince Charles chose it. I had sung it, I think, a few times but then, of course, I started to really sing it a few times after I knew what I had to sing, but he chose it. Were you nervous at all? Oh, absolutely, yes. I think this time it was pretty horrendously nervous.

30:57But I knew how to cope with all of that. And if I listened to the first couple of phrases, they didn't falter, which was important. The worst thing to do is to falter on the first phrase because everyone knows you're nervous. But I think I'd done it enough times that I wasn't going to fail on that moment.

31:23The Lord of Lief, the angel, the Lord of Lief It was an absolutely huge moment, obviously, globally, and it turned you from a big star of the opera world into a global superstar. Did you welcome that, that level of fame that you suddenly had? I don't really think it was so big a deal, really, because while I knew that I was well-known, And I didn't take it on as, you know, I'm sort of going to do crazy things. I just went back into my world and I started doing my music and I just quietly went off and did all my performances that I loved doing. And while that was quite a moment in my life, I didn't take it wherever I went.

32:06People took it, but I didn't because I knew there were more important things that I had to do with singing the performances that I was booked to do. And those were things I had to be relied on. It's interesting, isn't it? Looking back, this is an era, a time in which opera was probably more part of the mainstream media. You were regularly on chat shows. I've seen videos of you on, you know, Terry Wogan's show or Noel Edmonds. You sang on Top of the Pops at one point. She's one of the greatest sopranos of modern times. It's live in the studio, Kirita Karnoa. There's a dream... No, but, I mean, you're a star because you've got that rare thing that not many people in opera have, Which is a personality which attracts beyond opera lovers why do you say you didn't want to you don't want to be a star?

32:50Well, the stars not really the word star. I just think I want to be good in my job You can't say that you've made it really till you did can you know what I mean? You've not made it then I mean you've had it there Maybe it's means you want to get on a chat on the deep voice You're doing a bit of stuff with them Paul McCartney we had that's right well he's a bit out of date. Is he? Final bit of advice, Keely, get a capsule. It's a bad day. Whose show is this? Are you sure you're Kiri Takana with the opera singer? Opera stars now don't have the same place, do they, in the mainstream media? It seems not.

33:28Now, there are more important things. I mean, you've got sort of these, I call them these fast performances like The Voice and Britain's Got Talent and stuff. they've superseded all that we do and i feel that what we do is as hard work and it really is a lot of hard work a lot of study a lot of sacrifices and things i'm not sure all those people who win all these prizes do what we do you know you can't diminish it because they do well but ours is a little quiet it's a quiet profession that takes an awful lot of of work i mean serious work a lot of sacrifices and your health is major. Sometimes for pop singing it gets cold or it's voiceless.

34:08They can almost sing voiceless with the microphone, but we can't. We have to sing with the natural voice. Yeah, and very often the people who appear on those shows, the moment in the spotlight is very short. You were obviously from the moment you started, you were at the London Opera Studio, you were in it for the long run. But there must have been huge graft work. It must have been incredibly difficult were there times when you thought over the years you know this is just so difficult to be maintaining this level it most really crossed my mind but then when I retired I suddenly realized the pressure I that was off and I think it took retirement it took me a while to calm down took me a while to say I've retired but I was closing down anyway and I just decided that that the way to do it was very slow and that I would be able to leave this profession without regretting it.

34:58Is that a burden carried particularly by opera singers, do you think, because the standards, because the expectation for excellence is so high? It's a prerequisite, really. Yes, in lots of cases. You know, I hear singers that you can't name but you could who should be off the stage and you could say very quietly, don't you think time's up now? No, really. But that's the thing that I never wanted that to happen to me because I always felt that because I'd been given this amazing privilege of singing for the best in the world, at the best of my quality, that it was time for me to leave it with dignity.

35:32I had to be dignified about departing. But that constant need to keep your voice in check, I presume you have to really, you've looked after it over many years and that kind of the rehearsal and the expectation we're talking about, did all of that pressure take its toll, do you think, Onye? Well, I suppose it took a toll on my private life, but in lots of ways it was a wonderful relief that if I wanted to get rid of any heartache or anything, I'd just go and sing. And so it didn't matter. You know, singing kept my soul pretty happy. And music does. Even today, it keeps my soul happy. That's a lovely thing to hear then, that you could go out on the stage and that was your release.

36:10That was your unburdening yourself. Yeah, it was like if you're unhappy at home, which happened on a few occasions, when home wasn't so great, I could just go off and sing. And no one ever knew, which was nice. I thought I fooled the world because I can still sing, I can still produce what I could do and still be heart sore inside.

36:54That I'm so happy to be in my life Over the years in the recording studios and on the opera stages, you were probably primarily associated with Mozart or Richard Strauss. Are they the composers that you felt most comfortable with? Is that your comfort zone? Yes, and even today, if anything I would listen to would be Mozart or Strauss. It's beautiful to listen to the orchestra play those beautiful orchestrations. It's just such a joy. Does that mean that over the years, if you did do Wagner, it didn't feel as easy or you just weren't as comfortable there? I just felt that sometimes, you know, you damage your voice.

37:40You've got to be very careful to keep it to the right sound. And I was always very aware of it, along with the teachers I had. I remember I said to my singer, you know, could I ever sing Wagner? She said, well, if you never want to sing anything else, yes. So that was the answer. So I got it very quickly. What did the teacher mean by that? You'll blow your voice up and that's all you'll do. Oh, I see. So if you do Wagner, you have to dedicate yourself to Wagner. That's my type of voice. I didn't have a Wagnerian voice. That's what I think she was trying to tell me. You did do some Wagner, didn't you?

38:07Very little, very little. It was a soft-grained voice. It didn't have that bite that a Wagnerian voice needs. You need a little bit more oomph than mine had. And volume. Yes, yes. And there's that lovely rumble sound you hear in a Wagnerian singer, and it's gorgeous. It's just sort of the voice rumbles, and mine doesn't rumble. Can you not make it rumble? No. That's a natural attribute then? Yes. Birgit Nilsson had that wonderful bite. Callas had a bite of her voice as well. That was beautiful. How would you characterize your voice then? What is the sound of Kirita Carnival? Well, I suppose it was silvery.

38:43That's lovely. I think.

38:59You announced your retirement in 2017. Was that a difficult decision? No, because I was coming to it. I knew what I had to do. I think I'd planned it by two or three years before. And I sang last moment in Australia and said to my little team, that's it, no more. Don't even think about it anymore. And I didn't sing really another note after that. I mean, I sang privately, of course. I sing in the car a lot. It keeps me awake because I sing along with Barry White. I don't mind Amy Winehouse either. I think she's back to black. I rather like her song. It bounces me along on my long journey back down to Auckland.

39:37I want to hear Kirita Karnas singing back to black. She's good. She's really good. I like her. She bounces along. I'm going to get some real good pop music and sing along with it. You talked about your parents' backgrounds, coming both from working-class families. What did they make of your career and your superstardom and the global success? Well, my mother died the week after I made it to Covent Garden. And my father lived on for many more years. And so he came to the Met and people would come up to him and say, you must be Kiriti Karnabas' father and things like that. He just was a very quiet man.

40:13He thought it was quite fun. They didn't think too much of it, but my mother, of all the people who should have lasted a very long time, died the week after I made my debut. She knew about it, did she? Yes, she did, yes. I felt those, you know, sometimes the messenger leaves, and I think my mother was the messenger. I sort of feel like that. What do you mean by the messenger? Well, they bring the message to you, then they leave. It's a bit like that, isn't it? But she had encouraged you? Oh, all the way, yes. She was so proud. And, you know, if she was here today, she'd most probably go on and on and on.

40:51But they gave so much to me, you know. And I just remember so many stories about her that I won't repeat, but many sad stories, you know. They came from a very difficult background. And in New Zealand those times, way back there when she was born, there wasn't very much help from governments and things like that. There was nothing. So they'd all brought up in horrible circumstances and had to make some sort of their life. And she did. She gave it to me.

41:31You had such an extraordinary career. on stage and in recording studios. Is there one performance that you are most proud of? I suppose it can only be Figaro, because it was Covent Garden, the Royal Opera House. It can only be the Royal Opera House.

41:51Dame Kirita Karnowar, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. For sharing your cultural life with us. Thank you so much.

42:07Well, I do hope you enjoyed that conversation with Dame Kiri Takanoa. Don't forget there are dozens of world-class artistic guests to be found in our archives, including more classical stars, violinist Nicola Benedetti, pianist Vickin Olofsson, and composer John Adams, to name just a few. Search for This Cultural Life in BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts to subscribe to the series. From me, John Wilson, and producer Edwina Pittman, Thank you very much indeed for listening to This Cultural Life.

43:03the impact of birth on a mother affects us all. Then we're going to look at the incredible feat of human growth and learning in the first 12 months of life. Whatever shape the journey takes, this is a story that helps us know our world. Listen on BBC Sounds.