Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

On 28 March 2004, Sir David Frost interviewed Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

Please note "BBC Breakfast with Frost" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

DAVID FROST: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is one of the great figures of the opera world. She made her Covent Garden debut in 1971 but it was probably her solo performance at the royal wedding ten years later that made her a real household name in this country.

She's always believed in reaching the widest possible audience and in recent years she's expanded her repertoires to include jazz and popular songs as well.

[CLIP]

DAVID FROST: Dame Kiri has now launched a charity to help talented young singers just starting out on their careers, and she's with us now in the studio. Let's start with that, actually, because you launched your new charity in a gala way, what, three weeks ago?

KIRI TE KANAWA: That's right. In New Zealand, it was a gala performance for the foundation, with a lot of New Zealand singers - my son introduced me, which was rather nice.

He said to me "I'm not doing it" and I said "I'm sorry you are." And we had the wonderful Jonah Lomu come and say, you know, best wishes for the ...

DAVID FROST: And I read he's not well at the moment.

KIRI TE KANAWA: He's not well. He's a very, very sick young man. Only 28 and his kidneys have failed and he can hardly walk.

And of course in New Zealand we don't a donor situation, we don't have a donor programme, so you just have to stay in line for whatever kidneys come about. And only if you are emotionally involved with the person are you allowed to donate your kidney.

So of course in New Zealand we need to sort of be able to bring forward the person who could either donate or, you know, if someone unfortunately dies, that that kidney is given. It's a very sad situation, if you could see him, this great man, you know.

DAVID FROST: Oh that's so sad. This great man, this great athlete.

KIRI TE KANAWA: Great athlete - and from his knees to his feet, he, there is no feeling, the nerves have gone. It's a terrible tragedy.

DAVID FROST: It's terrible. That's terrible. And basically the foundation though is to help young singers.

KIRI TE KANAWA: Young singers. They, in my particular case, being a New Zealander, I want, it's to help New Zealand singers and musicians, but on the way I've seen some amazing British singers.

I met a little girl - only 15 - she would blow the socks off anybody, and you think I don't want her being given to a recording company to suddenly give her about a two year career and then, you know, she just sort of disappears. And classical music must survive and as I'm sixty I'm hoping that I'm living proof that you can actually sing to that age.

DAVID FROST: Yes, I want to come on to that about how you feel about your happy birthday and so on, but what was your - I was just reading that you started your career without the sort of help that you're going to give other people, and you started singing in clubs and bars originally?

KIRI TE KANAWA: That's right. Well to earn money. Only to earn money. I would do anything to earn money, I'd do everything and anything, and this is the only way I could do it. I would go in for competitions that paid a lot of money, or any old place to, just to get promoted, promote myself.

DAVID FROST: And when, in clubs and pubs, what did you sing?

KIRI TE KANAWA: I sang something like Ave Maria, I think, in some, and it was absolutely bizarre but they didn't mind, I think they were so drunk it didn't matter.

DAVID FROST: And now, as you say, you've just celebrated your sixtieth birthday. Does that provoke reassessment of your life or -

KIRI TE KANAWA: I believe it does. I mean I'm just suddenly thinking, well there's certain things I never will do again and so I'm reassessing where I will be in another ten years.

And I think it is a bit of a sort of a wake up call. When you're fifty, you think, wo-hoa, you know it's still fun, but when you're sixty, you think whoops I'm never going to come back as a 24 year old again.

So you have to reassess your life completely, yes, and the foundation of course is giving me something of great interest.

DAVID FROST: And you, because you said once, you said that as far as you were concerned, retirement - well you're not going to retire -

KIRI TE KANAWA: It's not an option.

DAVID FROST: Not an option, because you said it's the equivalent to death as far as you're concerned.

KIRI TE KANAWA: Yes, exactly, yes. But I want to - because there's things - I think you find in your life, you find something useful, more useful later on for other things that you can be useful to other people rather than the career that you had. I mean there's got to be a, you know, a fading down of what you did.

And I'm looking forward to promoting young singers, we're doing a dinner at Marlborough House on Wednesday night and Jonathan Lemalu will sing there, so that's exciting, he's a young up-and-coming New Zealander and certainly well on his way - a lot of New Zealanders coming through - but in the meantime

I'm also talking to other charities in this country, like Sir George Solti and seeing whether we can work, you know, in harmony, and promote all those singers, where I say to them if you've got a New Zealander singer well don't you give your charitable money to them, let me help on that, so we can, I'm sure work together.

DAVID FROST: And in terms of the future, that takes care of the future. You're life is going to be more on the foundation but pace-wise you're still going to sing as much.

KIRI TE KANAWA: Yes.

DAVID FROST: And you're still going to proselytise opera by means of crossover, yes?

KIRI TE KANAWA: Well as much as I can, yes. The thing is I want, would always do it with dignity and great respect, but there's certain areas that I just can't visit at all and I don't want to go below a certain standard.

So I think from the classical world point of view, I really want to keep my standards as high as I possibly can because it shows that young people should always rise to an occasion not sort of sink to it.

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