the Flower Garden, New Zealand

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                            Auckland New Zealand 2007

 

 

 

뉴질랜드 북섬에 있는

뉴질랜드 최대의 상공업 도시 오클랜드

그 한 켠에 있는

botanical garden에서

 

 

썸머타임 by Kiri Te Kanawa

                                                                                  

Dame Kiri Janette Te Kanawa( born March 6, 1944) is an internationally famous New Zealand classical soprano. In 1981, she was seen and heard around the world by an estimated 600 million people when she sang Handel's "Let the Bright Seraphim" at the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.

Te Kanawa was born in Gisborne, on New Zealand's North Island. She has both Māori and European ancestry, but little is known about her birth parents as she was adopted as an infant. She is the adopted daughter of an Irish mother and Māori father. In her teens and early 20s, Te Kanawa was a pop star and popular entertainer at clubs in New Zealand.

She was educated at Saint Mary's College Auckland and formally trained in operatic singing by the celebrated Dame Sister Mary Leo, RSM, who was New Zealand's best-known opera coach. She began her singing career as a mezzo-soprano, but later developed into a soprano. The voice is best described as that of a versatile full lyric soprano supported by a secure technique which has allowed Te Kanawa to sing a variety of music. Her recording of the "Nuns' Chorus" from the Strauss operetta Casanova was New Zealand's first gold record.

Kiri married Desmond Park, whom she met on a blind date in Auckland in August 1967 and married six months later. The couple adopted two children, Antonia (1976) and Thomas (1979), named after Kiri's adoptive father. The couple divorced in the late 1990s.