Kiri: Her Unsung Story

A Princess in a Castle

In September 1963 Kiri made the long drive south to Hamilton and the finals of the most prestigious of all New Zealand’s singing prizes, the biennial Mobil Song Quest.

From the moment she stepped on to the red carpeted entrance to the city’s grandest hotel, the Hamilton, it was as if she had entered a world attuned to her every whim. Upstairs in her room maids placed bouquets of flowers in cut-glass vases and the telephone rang constantly with dinner invitations and interview requests. Downstairs in the lobby staff introduced themselves politely, complimented her on her appearance and ushered her into the chauffeur-driven car permanently at her disposal. It was, she said later, her first taste of being treated like ‘a Princess in a castle’. Yet in her heart she still did not quite feel worthy of it all.

Even though her voice had matured into a glorious, rounded mezzo, Sister Mary Leo’s lack of praise had done little to ease Kiri’s occasional insecurity about the real depth of her talent. At the semi-finals for the Song Quest in Auckland, Kiri had been convinced her renditions of ‘Come to the Fair’ and ‘She is Far From the Land’ were disasters. Her performance was recorded for transmission on a special radio show days later when the six finalists would be chosen. She could not bear to listen as her voice filled Nell’s bedroom in the early evening broadcast. She had hidden in her own room with pillows over her ears as the names of the six singers chosen to travel to Hamilton were read out. Even the pillows had been unable to drown out the sound of Nell booming ‘You’re in, you’re in’, from the top of the stairs.

Kiri and Tom had spent the day of the radio broadcast trying out a new Simca to replace the battered old Standard Ten. The Simca was more expensive than the Triumph Herald Tom had intended buying. That night, with the prospect of a £300 windfall if she won again in the final in Hamilton, the decision was made to go ahead and buy the more expensive car. After listening to a repeat of the show on the radio, Kiri later recalled, she, Tom and Nell drove the Simca up to the Waitakere Ranges overlooking Auckland. ‘That night all of the streets were sprinkled with diamonds and gold dust,’ Kiri said, looking back sentimentally on the moment.

Kiri was one of two St Mary’s girls to be chosen for the final. Both girls knew Sister Mary Leo expected one of her singers to collect the prize for a third consecutive time, following the successes of Mary O’Brien in 1959 and Patricia Price in 1961. Malvina Major’s colourful, beautifully enunciated singing style made her one of the immediate favourites, especially in her home town. Yet many saw Kiri as an equally likely winner. Despite her youth and relative inexperience, Kiri had channelled her natural personality into an irresistible stage persona. Her ability to strike an instinctive rapport with her audiences had already won her an under twenty-one aria competition in Te Awamutu that year.

It had been at the less serious engagements that her regular accompanist Susan Smith had watched Kiri’s natural appeal begin to blossom. Smith, the daughter of a Blockhouse Bay butcher and another member of the St Mary’s musical circle, had known the Te Kanawa family since childhood. In many ways Kiri remained the same carefree girl she had first seen running amok with her niece Judy. ‘Kiri never had a confidence problem then. It was all a bit of a game,’ said Smith. ‘She wasn’t singing at these engagements because she was thinking “One day I’m going to be a star”, she was just singing because it was a fun thing to do and she did it well. If an audience wanted her to sing another six songs she would. She often told me she’d sing down a coal mine.’

Kiri enjoyed ad-libbing her repertoire. Her carefree attitude only added to the audience’s enchantment. Smith recalls how at one concert Kiri had come over to her and whispered in her ear that she was going to sing ‘The Laughing Song’ from Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. ‘But we haven’t rehearsed that. We don’t know that,’ a panic-stricken Smith whispered back. As the audience watched on the two girls continued their giggled conversation before pressing on with an impromptu version of the song. ‘Halfway through the song, where it goes “Most amusing, ah ha ha ha”, she really burst out laughing. Kiri had a really infectious, throaty laugh,’ Smith recalled. ‘She laughed and laughed and laughed, it was real hysterics. The whole hall just erupted. Soon everybody was laughing.’

When she eventually regained her composure Kiri explained that she was laughing at the conversation she had had with her accompanist. ‘Then she said, “I’ll turn around three times and we’ll do it again, and we’ll sing it properly this time,”’ recalled Smith. The audience sat there simply entranced. ‘Those sorts of things were special and the audience would never have forgotten that. They would have thought, quite rightly, “What a lovely, natural girl.”’

Kiri drove to Hamilton with Tom, Nell, Judy, Nola and Vincent Collins. As they mixed with the judges and officials from Mobil, the Te Kanawas were introduced to the four male singers chosen to make up the final six competitors. Among them was Rodney Macann, a Christchurch bank clerk whose fine bass voice had been polished in the choir of the Baptist church where his parents were staunch members.

During rehearsals at Hamilton’s main music venue, Founders Hall, Macann had been struck by the clarity and power of Kiri’s voice. On the night of the competition itself, however, he witnessed something else. ‘The initial impact in that hall was just electric,’ he recalled. ‘She sang a couple of songs and of course she was very beautiful, but it was this desire to communicate with people that she had which was unique. I’ve never seen anything like it since and I had certainly never seen anything like it at the time.’

For Kiri, however, the tragedy was that her performance was ultimately wasted. The format for the competition involved the judges listening to the performances in a radio booth at the other end of Hamilton. The thunderous applause that accompanied Kiri’s bow to the audience was the only clue the panel would have had of the dazzling performance they had missed. The competition’s main judge that year was James Robertson, a distinguished English musician working with the New Zealand Opera Company at the time. Back in England he was a favourite to be appointed the first director of the soon-to-be-opened adjunct of the Royal Opera House, the London Opera Centre.

Impressed as he had been by Kiri’s creamy voice, Robertson had found Malvina Major the more classical singer at that stage. With the six singers on stage he announced that he had placed Major first with Kiri second. A baritone, Alistair Stokes, was placed third.

As the winners were presented with their cheques and sashes, Kiri could not resist playfully upstaging her rival. Sister Mary Leo’s student Diana Stuart had been playing the cello in the orchestra pit. ‘I remember Kiri taking a handkerchief from one of the male singers and dabbing her eyes,’ she said.

As she watched events in Founders Hall, Stuart had not been surprised at the result. ‘The difference in the two was that between a huge canvas that Kiri had and a small but highly colourful canvas which Malvina had,’ she said. ‘On the night I thought Kiri had wonderful performing potential but the song didn’t do her much of a favour.’ Crucially, unlike Kiri, Malvina had concentrated on singing to the judges. ‘Malvina was not really involved with the audience.’

Even as a distant member of the Sister Mary Leo stable, Stuart knew the shock waves the surprise result would cause at St Mary’s. The result was precisely what the two girls’ teacher wanted. ‘Sister Mary Leo did want Malvina to win because she was ready for it and Kiri wasn’t,’ she said. Nell Te Kanawa, however, would never accept the result. ‘There was rivalry between Kiri and Malvina and I think that was precipitated by Nell. Nell would always ask “Why, why, why?” “Why did somebody beat Kiri?”’

Kiri declared herself overwhelmed with her second place. ‘I don’t think she was in the least bothered,’ said Rodney Macann, who joined Kiri at the post competition party. ‘At that stage she was new on the block and was just pleased to be there.’ Macann found Kiri even more charming than she had been on the Founders Hall stage. ‘She actually said to me afterwards she was disappointed that I hadn’t won.’

Nell, Tom, Judy, Nola and Vincent had decided to head back to Auckland that night. In the absence of her family and her boyfriend, Kiri and Macann soon began monopolising each other’s company. When the formal celebrations finished the party continued in Kiri’s room. She later recalled how her suite was so full she was reduced to sitting in her wardrobe where she sipped lime cordial. For most of the young singers there was no need for anything stronger. ‘We were all pretty high. Some of us were away from home for the first time,’ said Macann. Eventually Kiri, Macann, Malvina and one or two others slipped away from the celebrations and walked along the moonlit bank of the Waikato River together. Kiri and Macann stayed out under the stars until the small hours.

‘It was a beautiful evening, and quite a romantic sort of a thing,’ smiled Macann. ‘It was about that time that things sort of sprung up a wee bit between Kiri and myself.’ Kiri returned to Auckland the following day to sing in another of New Zealand’s premier competitions, the John Court Aria in Auckland. Close to exhaustion from the travel, the excitement of the competition and her night with Rodney Macann, she performed Sibelius’s ‘The Tryst’ on automatic pilot and expected little in return for her efforts.

A friend, Ann Gordon, called her at Mitchell Street to tell her she had won with a remarkable mark of ninety-five per cent from the judges. The judge, Clifton Cook, could barely contain his excitement at the discovery. ‘If I had had a bouquet I would have laid it at her feet. She is one of the finest New Zealand artists I have heard,’ he eulogised.

Kiri’s mind was already elsewhere, however. Within days of returning from Hamilton she telephoned Rodney Macann reiterating her invitation for him to come and stay in Auckland. Even in Hamilton Macann’s starchy Baptist background had left him unprepared for Kiri’s whirlwind openness. She had made no secret of her involvement with Vincent Collins, in whose company Macann had seen her in Hamilton. No sooner had he arrived in Auckland than Kiri matter-of-factly announced his path was now clear. For once Kiri had heeded Nell’s advice to the letter. ‘I supplanted Vincent Collins,’ he said. ‘She dropped him when we met.’

Like Collins, Macann was welcomed with open arms at Mitchell Street. However, he switched to a hotel for the rest of his stay. Macann found it difficult to warm to Nell’s uninhibited blend of bluster and blind faith. ‘Nell was not an easy person. She was determined that nobody would be ahead of Kiri,’ he said. Macann was appalled at the manner in which Nell belittled Malvina Major. ‘Nell put around all these rumours after Malvina won the Mobil that it had all been agreed beforehand. She said that Malvina came from a much poorer background and needed the money. It was part of her coping with the fact that Malvina had won, which was a huge shock to everyone to be absolutely fair.’

As he returned to Christchurch, however, he and Kiri pledged to keep the relationship alive. ‘We got very interested in each other, although we were living a long way from each other,’ he said. ‘We had something quite special. We were both moving towards musical careers and there was this huge passion that we both had for singing.’ Kiri’s spontaneity could not have presented a starker contrast to the stolidity of Macann’s life. Back at work in his bank in Christchurch Macann was amazed when Kiri called out of the blue to announce she was making the thousand-mile journey to see him.

‘She just announced that she was coming down to Christchurch and she wanted to see me.’ Kiri’s parting words to a startled Macann were, ‘I expect you to be at the airport and I want a big kiss when I arrive.’

‘I was amazingly inhibited when we first met,’ he said. ‘It was the last thing I’d be seen doing in those days because I was terrified.’ Kiri was not Macann’s first girlfriend. He too had broken off a relationship in the wake of Hamilton. Yet he had not met a girl remotely like her. ‘I didn’t find her a terribly sexy person, it was rather an energy. She was very lovable and she had these wonderful eyes. It was energy and eyes that got me.’

After her success in the competition circuit Kiri had begun charming the malleable New Zealand media with equal ease. In one of her first in-depth interviews, with the Auckland Star in September 1963, she presented herself as a serious and dedicated young artist. She said she was working hard at learning Maori. ‘I’m part Maori so I feel I should learn to speak it properly – it will also help me when I sing Maori songs,’ she said. In May and June that year, Kiri had sat through eight lessons in Maori with her friend the mayoress, Thelma Robinson. They were members of a class being used as guinea pigs for a new Maori textbook written by Johnny Waititi. Throughout the interview Kiri did all she could to reassure the Maori trustees of the wisdom of their investment.

Despite her headline grabbing success at that year’s competition, Kiri said she was determined to protect her voice. ‘If a baby tries to walk too young, then its knees might go wobbly,’ she smiled. ‘In the same way when a voice is as young as mine it can easily be killed by wrong use.’ Her instrument would remain under wraps for another two years while she studied with Sister Mary Leo, she reassured her new following. ‘Until I feel I know more about technique and my voice has developed I do not feel competent enough to accept many public engagements,’ she told the Star.

In reality her blossoming popularity left little room for such sacrifices. Kiri was still the queen of the ‘hatches, matches and dispatches’ circuit and the uncrowned diva of the dine and dance circuit.

Like the Standard Ten before it Kiri’s blue Simca became a familiar sight flying around Auckland. ‘She had this sports car and I’d see her roaring off from the church to get to the next wedding. She was a wild girl with a real lead foot in the car,’ recalled John Lesnie, one of Auckland’s premier society photographers in the 1960s.

Kiri accepted as many engagements as she possibly could – and was capable of cut-throat tactics to ensure her diary remained full. During her early St Mary’s days she had been friendly with another of Sister Leo’s star singers, Pettine-Ann Croul. ‘She came to our home and I would go through songs with her. She wanted me to mark them down for her voice. We had two entirely different voices. I was a coloratura and she started off as a mezzo,’ explained Croul, who went on to earn an MBE for her work in teaching singers and today runs her own performing arts college. Relations began to sour when Nell began subjecting Pettine-Ann’s mother, Mercia, to her interminable telephone calls. ‘She would tell her how Kiri had sung so much better than me, and everyone else. It was always how Kiri had been hard done by,’ Croul said.

Nell would call Pettine-Ann too. ‘I had calls from Nell asking what I was going to sing at a competition and she’d say I couldn’t do such and such because Kiri was going to sing that.’ Like Kiri, Pettine-Ann desperately needed extra money to support her singing education. Her father was a clerk of the works at the city council and was unable to afford the lessons she needed. She too had begun to sing at society weddings around Auckland. ‘I lost engagements because they would offer to do them for a lower fee. I remember one society wedding where I had quoted £15, which was reasonable for a full day’s work as it was, and later they rang back and said Kiri had undercut me by quoting £10.’

Inevitably the tensions strained friendships. ‘It became difficult to have a friendship with Kiri and we moved apart.’ If Kiri’s combination of talent, drive, good looks and influential support was not sufficient cause for jealousy among her rivals, her popularity as a nightclub singer only added to the deepening resentment. New Zealand’s stringent drinking laws meant that its pubs still closed at six o’clock in the evening, even on Saturdays. Londoner Bob Sell’s Colony Club had become one of the most popular venues for couples in need of an evening’s entertainment. ‘Women wore little bolero jackets and tucked bottles of gin or scotch under their arms,’ said Sell, the owner of a chain of restaurants who had converted an old city centre warehouse into his most successful venture.

Sell would hire three or four acts to entertain his clients from 8 p.m. until 2 a.m. in the morning. At first he had been unsure how Kiri’s studied elegance would go down with his raucous regulars. ‘She was a good Catholic girl and when she came on stage, the dress came up to her neck and down to her ankles. I used to say to her, “Why don’t you shorten the bloody thing?’” he recalled.