Kiri Te Kanawa

Born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron on 6 March 1944 in New Zealand, she became Kiri Te Kanawa and trained a full lyric soprano that critics called vibrant and ample without strain. On 1 December 1971 she sang the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House in London and the recognition went international. She built a career across four centuries of repertoire, singing in multiple languages, but the through-line was Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, and Richard Strauss - often cast as aristocrats, often landing in the top forty on Australian charts in the mid-1980s. Late in her working life she pulled back from opera, choosing concerts and recitals instead, and spent her time teaching masterclasses and shepherding young singers through the hardest stretch of apprenticeship.