The opera legend spent her illustrious career captivating audiences on the world stage but, as she tells Daniel Pembrey, she is just as at home in the sporting field
“I’m a strong person and don’t muck about with what I need to say,” warns Dame Kiri Te Kanawa who, as a world-renowned soprano, is foremost associated with the gentility of opera. Her eyes sparkle warmly. “I put it down to my Māori heritage. My blood tribe, the Ngāti Porou, is a fighting community.”
Strength mattered when performing in front of a 700 million worldwide television audience for the 1981 Royal wedding or commanding the stage at London’s Royal Opera House: inhabiting operatic characters; dealing with the demands on the body of projecting pitch-perfect note after note, night after night, for two to three hours at a time.
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa – an unerring shot
Early in her career she took up fencing to enhance her reaction speeds on stage, her sense of balance and overall agility. “With sports, it’s not that I mind losing but I do like to win,” she says. Sir Jackie Stewart introduced her to clay shooting in the 1980s when she was in her forties – specifically, pro-am shoots at Gleneagles. Dame Kiri proved an unerring shot but needed to be careful: “I had to wear double ear protectors and was always wary of inhaling smoke.” She preferred a 20-bore over-and-under Beretta, which she found kicked less than other guns. It also let her take aim more easily: “With the side by- sides, I’d started to lose my sight,” she says. “I loved the feeling when the clays went splat!”
Relationship with fieldsports
The conductor (and husband of Joanna Lumley) Stephen Barlow said of her relationship with fieldsports: “It’s a bit like windscreen wipers, washing the screen down so she can see clearly again.” Dame Kiri Te Kanawa concurs but points out that they were nothing new to her. Born in 1944, she grew up in the New Zealand bush accompanying her Māori father out shooting rabbits. They would venture off with their little dog and also went fishing together. “We’d get up at 5am at our house on Lake Taupo. I ate trout for breakfast every morning. My father was my hero. I became a very outdoorsy person.”
As she scaled the heights of the opera world, fishing would fit in around her performances. These took her to some of the most dramatic places on Earth – the Norwegian fjords, for example – letting her love of rod and reel allow for some unusual, rural concerts. It gave her a unique take on local customs and cultures. Salmon fishing in Iceland was a highlight. Along the way, her affinity with nature and the land deepened. Trees proved totemic (“those spruce trees up in Scandinavia” she marvels).
New Zealand always offered something extra, though, and became home for her and her family during the pandemic. They live on a 20-acre peninsula in the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland. It is a pristine seascape of undisturbed sandy beaches, windswept rugged headlands and deepest blue waters: a Lord of the Rings-like location.
“Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, we left the UK in such a hurry,” she recounts. “Bringing the dogs and getting them blood-tested was an absolute nightmare but worth it.” Her adorable, affectionate creatures now number four: a Norfolk terrier, a Norwich terrier and two Pomeranian Yorkies. “Nayak, another Pomeranian Yorkie, was from Glyndebourne and was my number one dog. Very sadly, she died recently. She was extraordinary; fearless: she knew exactly what to do with a pheasant, a fox or a squirrel. Now I have her two sisters.”
Fishing
Dame Kiri no longer shoots but makes up for it with fishing. “We have a 48-foot Cabo game boat that we take north of here; we catch snapper and the like. At the end of the day, we go into a quiet bay, have a barbecue and settle in for the night.” Gardening helps her stay grounded. Trees in her garden include the gorgeous kōwhai with its dripping yellow flowers: “It makes a golden path where the petals drop to the ground.” She has a tight-knit circle of friends, a new theatre named after her in Auckland and her long-standing Foundation, with funding recipients now singing in Germany and San Francisco. One recently performed Fidelio at Covent Garden.
She’s still extremely attached to Great Britain, and returns as often as she can. “We like to go up to Scotland. I’ve been on the Hebridean Princess three times, and that is glorious: the puffins, seals, Fingal’s Cave, the Isle of Skye… I love to go on these quieter excursions.” Indeed, Scotland has staged its fair share of adventures for her down the years. In 2003 she stayed in Glasgow en route to a charity shoot at a friend’s estate.
“Some very important people were going to this shoot. When checking into the Glasgow Holiday Inn, I declared to the girl behind the front desk ‘I have guns’. I was hoping that she’d find a safe place to store the shotguns, which I’d broken down,” she recalls. “I had all the relevant papers. Next thing I know, Strathclyde Police arrive. ‘I’ve seen you before somewhere,’ one says. Eventually we straightened everything out but news of the incident arrived at the shoot before I did, by way of articles in the Scottish papers – pictures of me included.”
It is hard to believe that she is now 80. “Fifty years in England was good to my skin,” she says. (Many Britons should be so lucky.) “I’ve never liked to go out in the sun,” she adds. It’s equally hard to believe that 44 years have passed since she performed at that wedding. She remains resolutely modest about her role that day, which made her such a household name. “It was just that: a role. I was the wedding singer. It wasn’t about me; I was just a piece of a much bigger jigsaw puzzle.” It was equally a piece in her own bigger jigsaw puzzle, and what a picture it’s turned out to be.