Post by Martin on Aug 12, 2009 11:52:15 GMT
Here is an article taken from yesterday's Daily Telegraph, announcing Dame Kiri's retirement:
The end of an aria as soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa quits opera
For 40 years, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has enthralled opera audiences around the world. In 1981 she was heard by 600 million people when she sang at the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.
Now the New Zealand soprano is leaving the operatic stage because the discipline is “exhausting”.
In April she will sing her last opera at the Cologne Opera in Germany. She will play the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, a role she has made her own.
In February, she will give her penultimate opera performance, playing the Duchess of Krakenthorpa in Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
It is normally a spoken role but she said she would surprise audiences by singing parts of it.
Dame Kiri, 65, said of the Cologne performance: “It will be my last. It’s not as if I want to do it on a regular basis now, because it’s exhausting.
“I think certainly our voices change; opera is mainly for young people.”
Some will see the two performances as coming out of retirement.
She has not sung opera since 2004 when she played in Samuel Barber’s 1958 work Vanessa at the Los Angeles Opera. At the time most thought it would be her operatic swansong, but this week she insisted she had never retired.
“The press retired me,” she said. “I have not been singing opera very much but I still sing a lot of concerts.”
She said she would not give up singing and would maintain her touring concert schedule.
Over the coming months she will perform in Sydney, Beijing, Spain and America.
“I’m extremely busy with all sorts of things,” she said.
Much of her time is dedicated to training what she called the “future stars of opera”, through the Solti Academy and her Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation.
In September she will bring three of her “future stars” to London to perform with her at the Tower of London.
In a sideswipe at reality television talent shows such as The X Factor, she said none of her efforts to foster new talent had been televised because the process took too long.
She said of her proteges: “They didn’t just come off packing bags at Asda. They have been studying, since they were 15 or 16. It takes 10 years.
“They come through the process very slowly. They are introduced into all aspects of it – the works, the diet, the body – the whole 10 years of it.”
The comments echo harsher ones she made last year about young “popera” singers such as Hayley Westenra, 22, a fellow New Zealander, whom she described as “not in my world”.
Attacking similar singers, she said: “They are all fake singers; they sing with a microphone. These people, two or three years and they’re gone. People call them up-and-coming, but they never last. They are the new fakes for the new generation.”
Her “future stars” will sing with microphones at the Tower Festival, but she stressed that was only because the musical setting demanded it: “In the Tower, we will have to [use microphones], but in the regular opera house, no.”
The 12-day musical and arts festival is being staged by the impresario Harvey Goldsmith.
Other highlights include Nigel Kennedy, the violinist; Jimmy Cobb, who performed 50 years ago with Miles Davis on the seminal jazz record Kind of Blue; and concerts of world music organised by the Womad music, arts and dance organisation.
By Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent
Published: 9:36PM BST 11 Aug 2009
Martin
The end of an aria as soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa quits opera
For 40 years, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has enthralled opera audiences around the world. In 1981 she was heard by 600 million people when she sang at the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.
Now the New Zealand soprano is leaving the operatic stage because the discipline is “exhausting”.
In April she will sing her last opera at the Cologne Opera in Germany. She will play the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, a role she has made her own.
In February, she will give her penultimate opera performance, playing the Duchess of Krakenthorpa in Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
It is normally a spoken role but she said she would surprise audiences by singing parts of it.
Dame Kiri, 65, said of the Cologne performance: “It will be my last. It’s not as if I want to do it on a regular basis now, because it’s exhausting.
“I think certainly our voices change; opera is mainly for young people.”
Some will see the two performances as coming out of retirement.
She has not sung opera since 2004 when she played in Samuel Barber’s 1958 work Vanessa at the Los Angeles Opera. At the time most thought it would be her operatic swansong, but this week she insisted she had never retired.
“The press retired me,” she said. “I have not been singing opera very much but I still sing a lot of concerts.”
She said she would not give up singing and would maintain her touring concert schedule.
Over the coming months she will perform in Sydney, Beijing, Spain and America.
“I’m extremely busy with all sorts of things,” she said.
Much of her time is dedicated to training what she called the “future stars of opera”, through the Solti Academy and her Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation.
In September she will bring three of her “future stars” to London to perform with her at the Tower of London.
In a sideswipe at reality television talent shows such as The X Factor, she said none of her efforts to foster new talent had been televised because the process took too long.
She said of her proteges: “They didn’t just come off packing bags at Asda. They have been studying, since they were 15 or 16. It takes 10 years.
“They come through the process very slowly. They are introduced into all aspects of it – the works, the diet, the body – the whole 10 years of it.”
The comments echo harsher ones she made last year about young “popera” singers such as Hayley Westenra, 22, a fellow New Zealander, whom she described as “not in my world”.
Attacking similar singers, she said: “They are all fake singers; they sing with a microphone. These people, two or three years and they’re gone. People call them up-and-coming, but they never last. They are the new fakes for the new generation.”
Her “future stars” will sing with microphones at the Tower Festival, but she stressed that was only because the musical setting demanded it: “In the Tower, we will have to [use microphones], but in the regular opera house, no.”
The 12-day musical and arts festival is being staged by the impresario Harvey Goldsmith.
Other highlights include Nigel Kennedy, the violinist; Jimmy Cobb, who performed 50 years ago with Miles Davis on the seminal jazz record Kind of Blue; and concerts of world music organised by the Womad music, arts and dance organisation.
By Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent
Published: 9:36PM BST 11 Aug 2009
Martin
