She’s sung all over the world, including at the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer, but now this famous soprano has voiced her retirement.
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, at the age of 73, has officially announced she’s longer singing.
The celebrated New Zealand born singer stopped performing a year ago, last performing in Ballarat, during an Australian tour, but this this the first time she’s made her retirement official.
The BBC reports Dame Kiri doesn’t even sing in the shower anymore, preferring her own memories. “Look what I had. The memories are lovely,” she said.
She said her reasons are that there are new voices to take over, and she’s training them at her own foundation. “It is in the past. When I’m teaching young singers and hearing beautiful young fresh voices, I don’t want to put my voice next to theirs.”
From being cast as Countess in The Marriage of Figaro at Covent Garden back in the 1970s when she was virtually unknown to her royal wedding performance of ‘Let the Bright Seraphim’ by Handel heard by 600 million people she’s certainly had a fabulous career.
She’s also admitted she’d never sang that ‘wedding’ song, or even listened to it, after hearing of the death of the Princes of Wales. “When she died, I felt that I should put that song away forever. In sort of respect for her, and the death and everything about it was such a terrible thing that I never wanted to hear it again.”