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.”
La Cieca. Excuse me, but this is an entirely specious argument. Whether you are or not a peer of Ms Fleming’s or any other singer is quite beside the point. The issue is how one treats other human beings. Are we to assume, that it is OK to hurt or degrade other human beings, so long as you have no professional association or peer relationship with them? I can’t imagine that is what you think.
Armerjaquino. Is this your idea of engaging in intelligent discourse?? Inviting the other party to piss off??
Dreary Kiri sang Tosca in Paris in 1982, in a production in which Gwyneth Jones took over the role later in the run (I saw Gwyneth, a friend saw both and said Kiri was awful) I also had the “honor” of seeing Kiri as Violetta, still the worst Violetta I have ever heard. She wasn’t known as Dreary Kiri for nothing. She was also incredibly lazy and lackluster. Who could forget when she got lost in the middle of Dove Sono during the Centennial Gala, she would often forget songs at recitals and have to start over. She always said she would rather be out playing golf. While it was a lovely voice, and unlike Renee she didn’t try to act or interpret, she just sang, she wasn’t exactly an exciting presence on the opera stage. She had lovely moments in Mozart, as the Marschallin (thought not insightful) and was a lovely Desdemona and Amelia in Boccanegra, but hardly in the same category as a Freni, Scotto, Caballe, Price, Verrett, Rysanek or any number of contemporaries of her heyday. She also wasn’t the nicest person to fans backstage either.
tustuprof–This is a BLOG, not a support group for divas. Are we (an La Cieca) only supposed to make happy talk? If so, why are you being so pissy?
Paddy–I was there at the 1983 Centennial and I thought, all these years, that I was the only person who noticed (or even mentioned) that Kiri lost her place in an aria she’d been singing, at that point, for over 10 years.
I heard her Violetta a few weeks later, and thought she was acceptable in the 4th Act–but there wasn’t much excitement until then. I didn’t hate it as much as you did. When she wanted to sing well, however, her Fiordiligi was very moving and technically as secure as any in her time. Her trill still impresses. But I don’t think she had the slancio for most Italian roles, and she later impressed as having glided through a lot of repertory. Although her Marschallin was very prettily sung, she admitted that she learned the part phonetically!
sorry–<>
aargh–sorry again. Above it should “OR La Cieca”
seconding Paddy: Kiri’s Violetta was astonishingly dull, and quite often inaudible. The lower part of her voice never had the edge–slancio, I guess–needed for Verdi (Desdemona excepted).
I seem to recall that she did a disc of Puccini/Verdi arias, including “Tu che le vanita”, from DOn Carlo. I also seem to remember thinking that she was okay, but really wrong for the rep. I loved her Mozart, however. Her Exultate was wonderful.
tustuprof: This has exactly nothing to do with “how one treats other human beings. La Cieca’s complaint was that te Kanawa was acting unprofessional and ungracious about another singer in a public interview. La Cieca’s point is that one expects a legendary diva who has enjoyed a four-decade career to show a certain amount of grace and generosity, which te Kanawa did not seem to be doing.
In other words, the big important person is expected to be nice to the little, less important person. It does not necessarily have to work the other way, i.e., that the little nobody like La Cieca should be overly concerned about hurting the delicate feelings of Renee Fleming.
Unless, of course, you want everybody just to say lovely things to everybody else, in which case the internet is probably not where you belong.
I just challenged myself to find some Hayley on iTunes. ANd discovered to my delight, that she’s already taken my advice, and recorded other arias besides the La Wally someone mentioned she is planning on. She has wisely chosen to sing the age-appropriate “O, mio babbino caro” and “When I am laid in earth”. And my goodness! If she doesn’t sound just like another young singer, Charlotte Church. That’s not a compliment, by the way. Hayley is about to turn 21 in April, and so is roughly the same age as the young singers in The Met finals, without any of their training or experience in opera or voice production or technique. SHe winds up sounding a decade younger then them.
But I dare any one of them to sing the pop rep she sings and not sound like an opera singer trying to cross over. She isn’t bad at the pop stuff. She’s in the same league as Miley Cyrus or Jamie Lynn (I’m 16 and about to be a mom. I’m, like, so, like, psyched!) Spears.