ready for her turban
So La Cieca thinks it’s time to declare this officially: Kiri te Kanawa has become a mean old bat. The downbeat diva, most recently in the headlines for her controversial anti-panty policy, has gone and dished Hayley Westenra, who apparently is a New Zealand popera singer. (Well, to be perfectly fair, “apparently” isn’t so accurate a way of putting it. Ms. Westenra’s debut CD currently ranks as “the biggest-selling classical album of the 21st century.” Really, cher public, you should keep La Cieca up to date on stuff like this.)
Anyway, the cranky Kiwi gave an interview to Canvas magazine (yes, again, La Cieca feels like she’s totally in the dark here) where she sniped that 20-year-old Hayley is “…not in my world, she’s never been in it at all.”
Te Kanawa then widened the scope of her outrage, insisting that pop opera performers in general “…are all fake singers, they sing with a microphone. People call them up-and-coming, but they never last. They are the new fakes for the new generation.”
Unfortunately La Cieca was not on hand to eavesdrop on the rest of the interview, but she dearly hopes that Dame Kiri next said something like, “Look at them in the front offices — the masterminds! They took the idols and smashed them — the Fairbanks and the Gilberts, the Valentinos! And who have we got now? Some nobodies!”
Incidentally, Dame Kiri’s next engagement (Tuesday, February 26) is a guest appearance on the New Zealand version of the television show “Dancing with the Stars.”
So Kiri has done it again. As Hayley Westenra is one of NZ’s younger heroines I suspect this time the Dame is going to be as popular as pork pies at a Jewish picnic again – but they (the NZ public) will soon get over it because the Dame is still big potatoes there and always will be.
Although she can be supremely good at putting her dainty foot in it, she sometimes does say things that resonate. Her comments to “lazy fellow Maoris” a few years ago “theatrically speaking” earned her many standing ovations and the wide support of Tribal elders.
The irony of this latest episode, is that now the Diva will undoubtedly be diced and sliced on Parterre by a group of ol divas who’ve yet to make the front page of anything, who are even more mean and vicious e.g. poor Miss Voigt being their latest victim.
I think I’m better off being an old unfamous ol Diva – it’s easier to say what you like.
Thing is, although it might not be the best PR- she’s dead right.
I totally agree with Armer. Not having read the whole interview and going only on the quotes here, there is not anything that Kiri said that is not accurate, in my opinion. Also in my humble opinion in world that is inhospitable to aging, i think one of the nice things about being older is that you can say wahtever you wanted to and not a give a damn.
and Dame Kiri is noted for her kindness to young students whom she helps without it getting into the newspapers.
Totally agree with her. On the Grammy’s honoring Pavarotti with goat one and two, oh excuse me, Bocelli and Groban was the last insult.
So what they sell records. SO WHAT.? 100 years from now they will be coasters for some drink.
They should stop insulting the intelligence of the classical music world by daring to call these microphone yielding babies as classical artists. Oprah might like Josh Groban, fool idiot, because her “friend” Gayle does, but no one else is fooled. Won’t say it won’t last for long. we are already putting up with broadway people in opera and insisting on ballerinas that sing. Good for you, Kiri. From down under.
who are the Broadway people that we are putting up with in opera? I mean other than novelty casting.
If only the dear old thing herself, had ever decided to really ‘apply herself’ to the task of opera. She was no Callas, Tebaldi, Price, Caballe’,etc etc. except being 3 or 4 ‘rungs’ below in standard. I.E Take her recorded ‘no balls’ Tosca. So immature: it made the Scarpia – through no fault of his own – ‘almost appear to be like a child molester down the back lane. That is, offering Kiri’s pathetic little Tosca, a bag of sweets’. Her Donna Elvira was about the best she did. What is Te Kanawa ‘famous for’? Kiri sings Broadway! Kiri sings Gershwin! Kiri sings Westside Story ….Kiri sings…..???!!! iF that is not someone ‘whoring a supposed opera voice’ for the most ‘chips’…what is? She SHOULD TALK about commericalism???!!! What a laugh!
Josephine: Looked at another way: Pinza, Traubel, Robert Weede, or Robert Rounsville are just a few of the ‘Broadway artists’ that also graced the opera stage don’t you think!
Kiri’s Nozze Contessa, Arabella, Desdemona, Amelia Grimaldi, Capriccio are among the very finest I’ve heard. Hardly “whoring” an operatic voice.
I don’t think she eversang Toasca on stage and without a strong producer she was often too placid on stage, but there was bags of temperament in her Elvira.
For a split second I looked at that photo and thought “what is Leona Helmsley doing on Parterre?”