A title in which Dame Kiri Te Kanawa talks of her love of opera and what it means to her, revealing her favourite composers and showing the various ways in which conductors interpret a work to different effect.
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Soprano Kiri te Kanawa is the most renowned New Zealander since Sir Edmund Hillary, famed around the world for a ravishing voice that is perfectly suited to performing the operas of Mozart and Richard Strauss. Made a Dame of the British Empire for her services to the crown (she sang at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana--oh, well), she's a familiar presence on compact discs and opera videos, as well as in the great opera houses of Europe and North America. Now she's produced (with the aid of writer Conrad Wilson) a book of thoughts, recollections, and observations on some well-beloved operas (along with some thoughts, recollections, and observations on colleagues, singers, conductors, and directors). This handsome and well-designed book is lavishly illustrated with wonderful production shots from various well-known opera companies.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I expected.,
This review is from: Opera for Lovers (Hardcover)
First of all I love the diva. I have almost all of her videos and CDs, opera and all these Kiri Sings Gershwin, Kiri Sings Porter, Kiri Sings In A Shower releases.She is unique. Every time I try to misuse her singing as a background for reading I close my eyes at the second or third aria, close a book and listen till the end, enthralled. Of course I was eager to invest in her book, though the title is cheesy. In the next few hours I had discovered that the cheesiness spreads well beyond the cover. The cover itself is a little masterpiece of cheap marketing pitch. It promises the glance behind the curtains, a gossip about Kiri's colleagues and "wealth of anecdotes, amassed by our(whose?)prima donna". "Kiri Te Kanawa was born in New Zealand, to the native Maori aristocracy." How do you like that? Do they think we need this stupid lie to treasure Kiri more? Every fan knows that her origins are unknown, she was adopted and raised by Maori parents at the appropriately named Poverty Bay. Now about the book itself. I do not blame Kiri, who was quoted as saying she prefers talking about shopping and lawn mowing not about music. We love her for the voice, not the eloquence she probably lacks. But the writer could do a much better job. What was the reason for including the following statement " Personally, I prefer to perform before the audience that cares"(page 22)? What a unique trait! It reminds me of the Russian parodical proverb " It's better to be rich, but healthy that poor, but sick." Conrad Wilson tried to give the book some structure with all these Act I, Act II, Curtain Call chapters. But the text is set in a paragraphs and Kiri's thoughts wander through them. Sometimes they take 2-3-4 paragraphs, then appear again a couple chapters later. The chapters hardly differ in content - all of them are made up of these random thoughts. None of the advertised anecdotes are worth repeating, none of the ideas can be called penetrating. I expected that book to be an authobiography, a memoir, something like Placido Domingo's "My first 50 years" but it's not. What's positive about that book? The photographs are abundant and nice. Better concentrate on them and just skip the text.
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