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.”
I remember Kiri many years ago when she was unaffected by success and had a wonderful natural talent that many Kiwis supported to help send her overseas to study. Her success throughout the world of opera was watched with great pride by all her fans and we loved the beautiful voice, her perfection, brilliance and the great performances throughout the world’s great opera houses.
However, as the years have passed and since she has become “Dame Kiri” – it is extremely sad to note how distant, cold and extremely snobbish she has become. Her rudeness to other performers is awful! Especially to a young NZ singer who is making a big impression overseas and introducing many young people to classical music, who otherwise might never listen to it. Maybe “Dame Kiri” is upset about someone else selling more recordings than she does.
The world has changed! Music is to be loved by everyone and performed by everyone – not just the classical ‘puro’ performers. Singers like Hayley, Charlotte Church, Katherine Jenkins, Andrea Boccelli help bring music to everyone. They may not be as technically perfect as diva “Dame Kiri” but they bring joy to many and I think their record sales reflect this. I think opera purists forget that once Mozart was hummed in the street by all the ‘ordinary working class’ and was really the pop music of the time.
Artists such as these young singers and conductors like Andre Rieu are bringing joy to the world and introducing music to one and all. Wake up Kiri!!
But why was Kiri singing with Will Martin (a fake popera singer) that weekend?
Hayley Westenra wants to do opera? According to an article claiming to quote the young woman herself, it was suggested to her when she was about 12 that she take that route but she decided against it.
She has done a bit of crossover but is hardly a popera singer.
I have seen the full interview; and the tenor is incorrect. Kiri was asked her opinion of popera generally with Westenra (a bad example) being mentioned.
She might easily have said she didn’t like the genre and felt that those involved would be better employed singing straight pop. She didn’t have to run with the Westenra example and bost about how much better she was. I believe someone worked out that about 2% of Westenra’s output is crossover and she was at the time of the interview touring the country with rocker Dave Dobbyn singing pop. She has never claimed to be an opera singer, and even balked at being labled ‘classical’.
Still, classical is an ill-defined term and they are now including Nana Mouskouri on the “classical” lists.
And what is it that makes classical vocalism superior to pop? Why is it that Sumu Jo singing Ave Maria is high art, but Westenra singing it is rubbish? I used to buy into the whole Art music myth but started having second thoughts when I saw some of the comments on various sites. Why is learning to project over an orchestra so important?
Unless you are an opera singer there is not need to learn it. It has nothing to do with vocal power, and opera singers don’t sing louder than pop singers (on the tests that have been done with sound meters by the mythbusters organisation).
But it is not enough to say Sumu Jo (or whatever) is better than Westenra, it is necessary to prove that the worst opera singer is somehow better than the best pop singer, if you are to maintain the Art Music myth, and that the techniques of opera singing makes for greater artistry is a groundless assertion.
When the style of opera Kiri and the other opera fans say is so great first became popular, the purists of the time rubbished it as refined aristocratic singing being overun by middle-class love of melodrama and spectacle and loudness.
To most people, opera is like the bellowing and shrieking of a wounded beast; whereas, when taken to task for using Westenra as the singer in a piece she was doing, classical composer Debbie Wiseman argued that Westenra could make the simplest of songs or music sound beautiful — something that arguably requires greater artistry than much opera is.
Because something is more complicated does not mean that it is greater art. Because an opera singer sings something from the great composers, doesn’t make that singer a great artist – anymore than my reciting Shakespeare makes me a great writer.
The conventions of opera are just that – conventions or fashions. Opera singers are good at singing opera style: this doesn’t make them better singers or artists than pop singers.
Opera itself has changed and evolved and the meaning of the term “classical music” has altered and changed to.
No, dears, sorry, Kiri is not a better singer than Hayley — in fact Kiri was never even a great opera singer, being uninvolved, cold, bland, and boring.
And nor, dears, do you have any authority to tell anyone what is or isn’t “classical music”; or what is or isn’t art; or what is or isn’t good singing.
And if a teenage girl wants to sing some of the greatest music ever written — O Mio Bambbino Caro — is that a problem? And if she doesn’t do it very well is that a problem?
Most not opera fans prefer Westnera’s version because she submits to the role. Te Kanawa’s is all “look at me aren’t I clever!”. Of course the opera fans say Westenra’s version lacks technique, but an instrumetalist friend tells me it’s “excellent”.
Who am I to believe? Westenra seems to understand that done properly the audience should end up weeping for Lauretta, not cheering for the Diva.
I’m putting on armour and retreating to my bomb-proof bunker. Feel free to call me a philistine and call my IQ into question.
Sanford Screamed:
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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.
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An interesting comment. On the one hand my instrumenalist friend who has had 30 odd years in a reasonable orchestra says the two arias of Westenra’s I showed him on YouTube were indistinguishable from a “professional singer”. I was surprised he said that, because he doesn’t like her voice much and is usually biased (in my opinion) towards things operatic. He seemed very surprised at the quality of them himself.
On the other hand, before she became labelled as “classical” Westenra received some favourable reviews from purist critics who seemed to feel that she was much superior to Charlotte Church. (The reviews are still extant on the Net, if you want to see them.)
I don’t think Westenra has done any ariars since she was about 16, so I don’t see the comparison with the MET people anyway.
Westenra has sung with Bryn Terfel and Jose Carreras at the Brynfest, and on other occasions with Carreras; was chosen to sing to Blair the Queen and assorted dignitaries when bush wanted to set up a musical evening for them (he approached Julian Lloyld Webber for advice); she was flown to sing to the Dalai Lama; features on 5, at least, film soundtracks (including The Merchant of Venice with Andreas Scholl) and three TV themes with a couple more in the offing (Kiri has featured on 7!); is on the latest Oldfield “Music of the Spheres” album; 1001 (thereabouts) different compilations, and duets with other popera and pop singers; has the fastest selling debut “classical” album of all time; is an Unicef ambassador (youngest ever), one of the ten most distinguished young people in the world according to some other international group, the inaugral winner of the New Zealand young achivers overseas award, and a zillion other such awards.
Worst of all, she is famous for making the song Pokarekare Ana famous, and it is often cited as the song that made her famous. And she is now being chosen to sing at New Zealand Memorial services, etc.
But this is the song that Kiri once said was her signature tune! And once onlly Kiri would have been considered for the other jobs.
Those who talk of Kiri helping young singers are obviously confusing her with Dame Malvina Major. Kiri has never helped anyone but herself.
The real problem is that New Zealand is a very very small country and Dame Kiri has a very very big ego.
This is not the first time, incidentally, that she has had a go at Westenra… why not the other more popera singers…?
Dame Kiri’s interview was just stupid. She broke every rule of dealing with the Media — 1. Never get tecnical, for example. Joe Bloggs has no idea what she is on about with the microphone business, or even what a “popera” singer is. One newspaper wrote a headline in which it said: Dame Kiri Blasts Young Opera Singers Like Hayley Westenra. Yes, it said “opera”. It’s not unique; a picture of women in high heels at some film preview has a picture of her captioned “Opera singer Hayley Westenra”.
On a computer forum I sometimes go to they heard about the controversy, and one mentioned that he’d even heard similar things said about Katherine Jenkins (the implication being how stupid it all was). Some of them went to listen to Westenra on Youtube and one ended up buying three of her albums…
What the opera snobs think they are achieving, I don’t know. What they are achieving is alienating a lot of moderate classical music fans as well as the public at large.
I have a friend who teachers classical music but thinks Dame Kiri is a ridiculous old idiot. He is performing in a classical series featuring students and staff from the local university music department. One of the voice students involved is a sibling of Westenra’s. It’s a complicated old world.
BTW, Westenra (senior) once said that her music was “just entertainment”. If only more people — some in particular — could get themselves and what they do so sensibly in perspective.
The real fakes are those who pretend to be something they are not, don’t you think?
Kiwi Tenor said:
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By all accounts (well, from her vocal coach), Hayley wants to sing opera and her new album will feature the La Wally aria, Laschia ch’io pianga, and Deh Vieni. I figure an album of Wagner ‘hits’ will follow. May god help us all.
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Who is this “vocal coach”?
Laschia ch’io pianga was featured on one of her early albums and on the Celtic Woman CD and DVD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KNQLyD-vLc
She was a very naughty girl too! But she has a job to do, and nothing in her job description says that she has to please opera fans. In fact, it probably says she must never even consider it for a second, because then the paying audience would disappear. She has made a pact with the devils of fame and fortune, and is keeping her side of the bargain. If Kiri and opera fans can’t understand that, that is their problem.
I am a New Zealander too, and I cannot find any examples of the local press referring to Westenra as a “young opera singer”. Overseas there are examples yes, but not in the New Zealand press.
I would be interested in Kiwi Tenor’s examples of this being done. It is easy to google “Hayley Westenra” and then click “news” and check what the Kiwi press have been saying about her and how they phrase it.
The original interview did not suggest that Hayley was likely to follow in Kiri’s footsteps, but simply what Kiri thought of the popera genre as exemplified by the likes of Hayley.
Nor can I find any examples of the New Zealand press suggesting that Westenra is a “new Kiri” (not since she was very young and before she had any record deals).
The opera community in New Zealand has been rather bitchy towards her from the time she was about 10 and became famous for singing Christmas carols at various functions. Similary, they have been bitchy towards Yulia Townsend another young successful soprano (they called them the “terrible twins”; but their main sin seemed to be that they were rather successful.
It seems to me that Kiwi Tenor’s desire to portray Kiri in the best possible light has clouded his judgement and his memory of the facts.
Who is this vocal coach he mentions?
Westenra had lessons with Dame Malvina Major when she was in New Zealand and has a coach in London. I know who the coach is, but wonder if Kiwi Tenor does.
I can’t see the coach ever saying that Westenra wanted to do opera, and if such an unlikely thing were true, it would be known on the fan sites and elsewhere, I would think. I can find no mention of it.
Why are we dredging this up again? I admit to being a die-hard Te Kanawa fan. I don’t see what is wrong with her like some people say. Her singing is not unemotional or cold, and she sings some of the most beautifully in-tune notes around (Look at the Rosenkavalier DVD with Bonney, Howells if you think she doesn’t show emotion). I am sure she has an ego (who doesn’t?), and that she likes to speak her mind (lucky her–she can tell it like it is). Sometimes we tend to fall all over ourselves and expect people who entertain us to be beyond human, but they are not. Dame Kiri has had a fantastic career as an opera singer, but I don’t think the Pope has any plans to push for sainthood, nor should we. BTW I like Hayley’s singing, too, just not in the same rep as Dame Kiri.
I am sorry to dredge it up, as it were, I just came across it, and came late to the whole thing.
Of course it is true that they are very different types of singers. Perhaps they shouldn’t be compared at all.
Yes, we should respect Kiri for her achievements as an opera singer. There are some who have criticised her along the lines I menioned; and I have found one or two of her songs like that, although, I agree, they were mainly crossover stuff, which many of her fans think she is not great at.
I retract the cold and unemotional bit. I was falling into the same trap or using the same trick that many use to damn Westenra — take the person’s worst effort and make out it’s typical of them.
I very much like Kiri’s “Greensleeves”, for example, now I think of it, and Hayley couldn’t do that, I don’t believe, anywhere near so well. But, even though it isn’t really my cup of tea, I think that Hayley does her speciality, which is a warbling middle of the road ballads like Shenandoah, Scarborough Fair, etc, very well. And there is something about opera training that makes it difficult for opera singers to do such things well. Bryn Terfel is an obvious exception — his Pokarekare Ana duet with Hayley is perhaps the best duet of that song ever done. It is a strangish interpretation, but seems to work.
Of course we all have egos, but let’s not let Kiri’s greatness as an opera singer make us ignore her making gross mistakes. She says herself that she was taken out of context and grossly misquoted, but few believe it.
She didn’t tell it like it is. She simply did not get her message across to the public or anyone but died in the wool opera fans.
Presumably, she thinks popera is fake because such people are not real opera singers? But that is why it is called “popera”….
She came across simply as boastful and snobbish and the microphone business is damn silly. Why should pop or popera singers not use microphones?
And she said the singers were “fake” not the genre. If you believe that is fair comment, we must disagree. Careeras and Terfel and other opera singers have been exceptionally helpful to amd supportive of Westenra. I repeat that Kiri has sung a duet with Jenkins and shared a stage with Will Martin. This is hypocrisy. And why is the emphasis always on Westenra? Because she’s worse than the others or more successful, or something else?
Te Kanawa has done a duet with Jenkins and was very friendly to her, shared the stage with Will Martin, sung with other pop singers, but when she accidently once met Westenra snapped “hello” and immediately ran off in the other direction.
Dame Kiri parroted a formula that has been used against popular singers going way way back. They said it about the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and ever since there has been the split between popular and supposedly art music.
Popular musicians have small voices and need microphones.
Crap, they are just as loud as opera singers and loudness in not a measure of artistic merit. The loudest singers are rock singers.
They never last more than two or three years.
So you think Dame Kiri’s saying that the likes of Hayley only lasting two or three years is telling it like it is?
She has already lasted about ten years and seems to be going from strength to strength. She has a major concet thingme in September with some British army memorial thing, and other concerts every week, she could do a concert a day if she wanted and was able to. The notion that popular singers have a brief period in the limelight and then are forgotten is crap. Even the minor ones are remembered and played years later. Go look at YouTube. It is popular writers who are soon forgotten.
Sorry, but Dame Kiri’s rant was braindead rubbish. None of it made any sense.
May I just add that I am actually sympathetic to the purist’s desire to distinguish opera singers from those who aren’t. It irritates me, too, when I sse Hayley Westenra labelled as an “opera” singer. From one interview it is obvious that it irrates her too, and it seems from my nosing around that it irritates people on her fan sites as well.
But if that is the message that The Great Woman was trying to get across to Joe Public, she couldn’t have failed more spectacually if she had tried.
If she thinks her going on and on about Westenra not being in her world wouldn’t be something the newspapers would hammer, she is remarkably naive. And the newspapers, in their ingorance, assume she is attacking someone from her own genre and come up with headlines like — Dame Kiri attacks young opera singers — or — Dame Kiri attacks young classical singers.
If she was concerned about these people being called opera singers, why, why, why, in the name of God didn’t she just say that?
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Q. Dame Kiri what do you think of the popera genre that people like Hayley Westenra have been so successful in?
A. To be honest, I hate the genre and it angers me to hear these people called “opera” singers. They are not opera singers. I think they would be better employed using what talents they have singing straight pop.
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But instead she ranted about how wonderful she the Great Woman was being involved in the peak of vocal achievement (an idea that went out with the ark outside of opera circles themselves).
If she was attempting to do what she is supposed to have successfully achieved in other cases, that has backfired too.
On one “pick your favourite woman of popera” quiz, Westenra was on 71%, Garret on 15%, and Jenkins on 10% with the rest making up the difference, and she has moved up a place on the Classicalx public rating to be now ahead of that other great opera singer Andrea Bocelli. She has been the top rated woman on that list for some time too, well ahead of Jenkins and Natasha Pane, and comfortably ahead of Charlie Church in second (don’t ask me why).
The anti-Kiri hysteria on public and fan forums is not as intense as the anti-Westenra hysteria on forums like this or opera forums where she has always been seen as a demon straight from the lowest pits of hell, but it is intense and the press, who Dame Kiri has terrorised for years, are secretly reveling in it.
Anyone else bored?
There will always be some that feel they have to hold themselves (and their artform) above the rest. In some respects opera (and classical music for that matter) is dieing because of these types of people.
There is some great music coming out of the pop/jazz/urban/folk worlds and opera would be wise to embrace them. Ballet companies have started incorporating Urban dance styles because they know – 1) good urban dancers are just as skilled as good ballet dancers and 2) the crowds are better if they do. Opera used to be cutting edge, now its just stuffy re-runs.