Capriccio poster

This poster portrays Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in Capriccio by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). Dame Kiri was famous for her interpretations of three leading roles by Strauss: Arabella, the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, and the Countess Madeleine in Capriccio. With its complicated German text, the Countess was a particularly hard role to learn.

In this image, Dame Kiri is wearing a heavily beaded dress by Gianni Versace. Capriccio was set in around 1775, but for this particular production, the opera was given a new look with the principal performers in modern dress by Versace. The dress was displayed at Te Papa in the exhibition Gianni Versace: The Reinvention of Material in 2001.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

In 1965, at the age of twenty-one, Kiri Te Kanawa won two of Australasia’s most prestigious competitions, the Mobil Song Quest and the Melbourne Sun Aria. By the mid-1960s she had become New Zealand’s most popular lyric soprano, winning audiences through stage and screen performances and recordings of both opera and popular songs.

In 1966 she left New Zealand to study at the London Opera Centre. Within five years she became one of opera’s most promising new stars. Her debut as the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1971, brought her international fame. Three years later, she played an acclaimed Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello at the New York Metropolitan Opera in a last-minute first appearance.

In 1981 came the extraordinary opportunity to sing at the wedding of the Prince of Wales and the Lady Diana Spencer. In recognition of her performance she was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1982.

Dame Kiri is considered one of the greatest sopranos of her generation. She was also successful in singing across musical boundaries which won her huge admiring audiences around the world. After a long and successful career, Dame Kiri announced her retirement in 2017.