Dame Kiri Jeanette Claire Te Kanawa (pronounced /ˈkɪri tə ˈkɑːnəwə/; born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron on March 6, 1944) is a New Zealand opera singer. She has a strong and beautiful soprano voice, described as "mellow yet vibrant, warm, full, and natural." On December 1, 1971, she became internationally known when she performed the role of the Countess in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House in London.
Te Kanawa has received praise in many countries. She has performed music from the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries and sings in several languages. She is closely linked to the works of composers Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, and Richard Strauss, and is often cast in roles of aristocrats. Her recorded music includes three albums that reached the top forty in Australia's music charts in the mid-1980s.
Later in her career, Te Kanawa performed in operas less often, choosing instead to sing in concerts and recitals. She also spent much time teaching young singers through special classes and supporting them during their training.
Personal life
Te Kanawa was born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron in Gisborne, New Zealand. Her parents were Tieki "Jack" Wawatai, a Māori butcher, and Mary Noeleen Rawstron, the daughter of Irish immigrants. Wawatai was already married to Apo, the daughter of the Rev. Poihipi Kōhere. Te Kanawa’s mother insisted the baby be given up for adoption. As an infant, Te Kanawa was adopted by Thomas Te Kanawa, who owned a successful trucking business, and his wife, Nell. Kiri Te Kanawa’s adoptive family is Ngāti Maniapoto.
She was educated at St Mary’s College in Auckland. Sister Mary Leo Niccol provided formal training in operatic singing. Te Kanawa began her singing career as a mezzo-soprano but later became a soprano. Her recording of the "Nuns’ Chorus" from the Benatzky operetta Casanova was the first gold record produced in New Zealand.
Te Kanawa met Desmond Park on a blind date in London in August 1967. They married six weeks later at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Auckland. They adopted two children: Antonia (born in 1976) and Thomas (born in 1979). The couple divorced in 1997. Te Kanawa never tried to contact her biological parents. However, her half-brother Jim Rawstron reached out to her. At first, she refused to meet him, but she agreed in 1997. The meeting ended poorly when a newspaper reported on it. Despite Rawstron denying any contact with the newspaper, Te Kanawa later confirmed her decision to remain disconnected from her birth family.
Career
In her teens and early 20s, Te Kanawa was a pop star and performer at clubs in New Zealand. She often appeared in newspapers and magazines. In 1963, she came in second place in the Mobil Song Quest competition, singing "Vissi d'arte" from Puccini's Tosca. In 1965, she won the same competition and received a grant to study in London.
She appeared in the 1966 musical comedy film Don't Let It Get You. In 1966, she won the Melbourne Sun-Aria contest, a competition that Malvina Major had won the year before. Both singers had been taught by Sister Mary Leo.
In 1966, she joined the London Opera Centre without an audition to study with Vera Rózsa and James Robertson. It was said that when she first arrived, she did not have strong singing technique, but she had a natural ability to draw the attention of audiences. She first performed on stage as the Second Lady in Mozart's The Magic Flute. After a recommendation from Richard Bonynge, she began training as a soprano in 1967. When she performed the title role of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in a concert that year, music critic Alan Blyth predicted she would become the "opera star of the next decade." In December 1968, she repeated the role at the Sadler's Wells Theatre.
She also performed the title role in Donizetti's Anna Bolena. In 1969, she appeared as Elena in Rossini's La donna del lago at the Camden Festival. Praise for her performance as Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo led to a three-year contract as junior principal at the Royal Opera House. She made her debut there as Xenia in Boris Godunov and a Flower Maiden in Wagner's Parsifal in 1970. She was given the role of the Countess in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro after an audition. The conductor, Colin Davis, said, "I couldn't believe my ears. I've taken thousands of auditions, but it was such a fantastically beautiful voice." Under director John Copley, Te Kanawa was carefully prepared for the role, which opened in December 1971.
Meanwhile, John Crosby of the Santa Fe Opera, a summer opera festival in New Mexico, heard about her success. He cast her as the Countess in Figaro, which opened on 30 July 1971. The production also included Frederica von Stade's first appearance as Cherubino, a role she later became famous for. A historian of the Santa Fe Opera said, "It was two of the newcomers who left the audience dazzled: Frederica von Stade as Cherubino and Te Kanawa as the Countess. Everyone knew at once that these were brilliant finds. History has confirmed that first impression."
On 1 December 1971 at Covent Garden, Te Kanawa repeated her Santa Fe performance and created an international sensation as the Countess. She sang "Porgi amor" and received great praise. This was followed by performances as the Countess at the Opéra National de Lyon and San Francisco Opera in 1972. In 1972, she first sang the role of Desdemona in Otello in Glasgow. In 1974, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera (Met) as Desdemona, replacing an ill singer at the last minute. She performed alongside Jon Vickers in the title role. Te Kanawa sang at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1973 and made further debuts in Paris (1975), Sydney (1976), Milan (1978), Salzburg (1979), and Vienna (1980). In 1982, she performed the role of Tosca in Paris. In 1989, she added the role of Elisabeth de Valois in Verdi's Don Carlos to her repertoire at Chicago. In 1990, she performed the Countess in Capriccio by Richard Strauss, first at San Francisco and later at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, and the Met in 1998.
In later years, Te Kanawa performed at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Paris Opera, Sydney Opera House, Vienna State Opera, La Scala, Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and Cologne Opera. She added roles such as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, and Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, as well as Italian roles like Mimi in La bohème. She played Donna Elvira in Joseph Losey's 1979 film adaptation of Don Giovanni. In 1981, she sang Handel's "Let the bright Seraphim" at the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer, and was heard by an estimated 600 million people worldwide.
In 1984, Leonard Bernstein decided to re-record the musical West Side Story, conducting his own music for the first time. The "operatic version" starred Te Kanawa as Maria, José Carreras as Tony, Tatiana Troyanos as Anita, Kurt Ollmann as Riff, and Marilyn Horne as the offstage voice who sings "Somewhere." Te Kanawa was the first singer to join the project. She said, "I couldn't believe it…This was music I'd grown up with, music I'd always wanted to sing." The album won a Grammy Award for Best Cast Show Album in 1985. The recording process was filmed as a documentary, The Making of West Side Story.
Te Kanawa has a strong connection to the heroines of Richard Strauss. Her first performance in the title role of Arabella was at the Houston Grand Opera in 1977, followed by roles such as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier and the Countess in Capriccio. Many performances were given under the baton of Georg Solti, and in 1981, she made a recording of *Le no
Retirement years
On September 13, 2017, Te Kanawa announced she would stop performing. After retiring, she worked to help young artists and judged singing competitions. Her last performance was in Ballarat, Australia, in October 2016, but she did not officially retire until September 2017.
In 2021, she returned to New Zealand to live permanently after spending 55 years in the United Kingdom. She was part of the official New Zealand group that attended the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
Initiatives
Te Kanawa created the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation to help young New Zealand singers and musicians who are very dedicated to their art achieve their dreams through careful and thoughtful guidance and support. The foundation manages a trust fund that gives scholarships to these young artists.
In October 2025, it was announced that the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation would take over the naming rights for the Lexus Song Quest (which Te Kanawa previously won as the Mobil Song Quest). The contest, which happens every two years, will be called the Kiri Te Kanawa Song Quest starting in 2026.
In January 2010, Te Kanawa and BBC Radio 2 started a program to find a talented future opera singer. This program was called the BBC Radio 2 Kiri Prize competition.
More than 600 singers from different regions tried out for the competition. Forty of them were invited to attend masterclasses in London with Te Kanawa, mezzo-soprano Anne Howells, and conductor Robin Stapleton. From these classes, 15 singers were chosen to compete in the semi-finals. These performances were broadcast on BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night Is Music Night over five weeks. The semi-finalists performed with the BBC Concert Orchestra, led by Martin Yates, Richard Balcombe, and Roderick Dunk. Their performances were judged by Te Kanawa, Howells, Stapleton, and director John Cox.
Five singers reached the final, which was broadcast on Radio 2 on September 3, 2010. The winner, soprano Shuna Scott Sendall, performed with Te Kanawa and José Carreras at the BBC Proms in the Park in Hyde Park, London, on September 11, 2010. She also received the chance to attend a three-week training program at the Solti Te Kanawa Accademia in Italy.
Views
In a 2003 interview with the Herald Sun, a newspaper based in Melbourne, Te Kanawa criticized the high level of reliance on welfare programs among the Māori people, which upset some of her fellow citizens.
In February 2008, Te Kanawa expressed her disapproval of operatic pop singers in an article published in The New Zealand Herald’s Canvas magazine. She criticized Hayley Westenra just before Westenra’s Starlight Symphony concert in the Auckland Domain.
Te Kanawa’s comment faced criticism from music critics and industry professionals, including producer Gray Bartlett, who discovered Westenra, and Katherine Jenkins, who shared the feedback through her spokesperson.
On July 2, 2024, The Times published a letter to the editor signed by Te Kanawa and many other public figures, both Catholic and non-Catholic, who asked the Holy See to protect what they describe as the "magnificent" cultural tradition of the Catholic Church’s Traditional Latin Mass.
Litigation
In 2007, the event management company Leading Edge took legal action against Te Kanawa for breaking a contract after she canceled a concert featuring Australian singer John Farnham. She canceled the event after learning that some of his fans had thrown their underwear on stage, which he would then display proudly. The court ruled that no contract existed between the two parties, so Te Kanawa was not responsible for paying damages. However, Mittane, the company that employs and manages Te Kanawa, was required to pay Leading Edge A$130,000 to cover expenses already spent.
Honours
In 1973, Te Kanawa was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her work in music. In 1982, she was made a Dame Commander of the same order for her contributions to opera. In 1988, the French Government honored her by appointing her an Officier des Arts et des Lettres. She received the New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal and was named to the Order of New Zealand in 1995. In 1990, she was appointed an Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia for her work in the arts, especially opera, and for her community service. In 2005, she was given an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the University of Bath. A stained glass window in St Paul's Cathedral, Dunedin, shows her as Saint Cecilia. The window was revealed in October 2012.
In 2018, she was named a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for her work in music. The Prince of Wales gave her this honor at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on December 20.
In November 2019, the ASB Theatre in the Aotea Centre was renamed the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre to honor her achievements and her 75th birthday. Te Kanawa unveiled a plaque to mark the change before a special event held in her honor.
Awards
Te Kanawa was chosen as Artist of the Year by Gramophone magazine in 1982. On June 10, 2008, she received the Edison Classical Music Award during the Edison Classical Music Gala (previously known as the Grand Gala du Disque) in the Ridderzaal in The Hague. In 2012, Te Kanawa was honored with a World Class New Zealand award in the Iconic New Zealander category.
In 2006, she was given the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement by Awards Council member Dame Julie Andrews during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles.
In 2010, she received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.