Dame Kiri Te Kanawa is a witless and jealous fake!

The context
Dame Kiri had arrived in New Zealand after recording a duet with popera singer Katherine Jenkins for Jenkins' latest album.

On the evening of the same day this interview cited below took place she was scheduled to perform at the SkyCity Starlight Symphony where she was to share the stage with popera singer Will Martin. She had described the singers she was to appear with as the "cream of young New Zealand Talent".

The Interview
This text is from an article in Canvas Magazine by Alan Perrott.

"I thought it was a reasonable question: Has the rapid rise of so-called classical crossover, singers like Westenra, created a new audience for opera? A kind of trickle-up effect?

'I don't talk about crossover", replies the Dame. 'Have you heard Hayley? She's not in my world, she's never been in it at all. She's one of those singers singing today, very successfully but she's not in my world and never will be. And I will never be in hers. They are all fake singers, they sing with a microphone. People call them up-and-coming, but they never last. They are the new fakes for the new generation coming through, but they can only perform with a microphone and they've basically never had any form of formal training. I've had a 40-year career, but these people, two or three years and they're gone.'

Te Kanawa is parroting arguments the opera community often use to claim they are superior to pop singers.

Projecting over an Orchestra
It is traditional in opera not to use microphones, and opera singers use a technique that produces extra frequencies that are higher than those produced by an unamplified orchestra.

These frequencies known as the singers "formant Frequency" can be heard over an orchestra. But contrary to what is believed this bears no relationship to the volume and power of a singer's voice. Opera singers' voices are no more powerful than other singers.
Singing techniques

Why Do It?
The only reason for using this technique is if you are taking part in a traditional opera. In other contexts it would be silly and counterproductive. Nor will it work if the orchestra or instruments accompanying the singer are amplified.

"They sound like they are screaming"
Not only would any good voice coach strongly recommend non-opera singers not to use this technique, but many feel opera could benefit from dropping the convention.

According to musicologist David Huron, when someone is very frightened the ventricular folds on top of the vocal cords are involuntarily raised, and much of an opera singer's training is about bringing these folds voluntarily under control. This means that opera singers produce the bulk of their sound energy in the 3- to 4-kilohertz range. The human ear is very sensitive to this because it is in the same range as the human scream.

This explains the common complaint about opera that the singers sound like they are "screaming".

So this is how Te Kanawa and her opera friends project over an orchestra. They use a trick to produce sounds in the same frequency range as the human scream.
Mystery behind music-induced shivers

It can sound impressive to hear a singer seem to fill a hall with their voice in this manner, but there are also many people who find it unpleasant.

Completely meaningless nonsense.

Many of Hayley Westenra's fans are almost as old as Te Kanawa herself.

Westenra is primarily a singer of traditional ballads who has done a minimal amount of crossover. She hasn't, as have some other so-called "popera" singers, affected an operatic style. In four or five years of performing concerts (almost on a weekly basis) she has performed arias on only a handful of occasions.

Her repertoire is much more similar to someone like Nana Mouskouri (who like many popular singers has also sung a number of famous arias). She operates in what used to be called the "easy listening" genre -- the singing of traditional ballads and folk songs for an older audience, which is usually neither interested in pop nor traditional classical music.

Singers of similar ilk would include Sissel, the Norwegian singer of ballads and Christmas carols, and the late Harry Secombe.

Even so, the more genuine "popera" singers and other crossover singers appeal to an older audience and there is nothing new about crossover or popera.

Te Kanawa is parroting witless nonsense.

More absurdity.

Westenra made her first record deal when she was 13 and she is now 21 and still seems be doing very well.

Singers of her ilk have usually lasted well. Sissel and Nana Mouskouri are typical examples and Sarah Brightman has a similar repertoire. The type of ballads that Westenra specialises in are evergreens with a lasting market. Traditional ballads such as Danny Boy, Shenandoah, Scarborough Fair and hymns such as Amazing Grace and Abide With Me never go out of fashion.

Te Kanawa is brainlessly parroting a myth. It is true that popular writers often have a brief time in the limelight and then are quickly forgotten, but this is not the case at all with popular singers.

A quick look around the Internet or a visit to your local record store will soon prove that old pop singers don't disappear and are not forgotten. Not even relatively unknown ones.

The opera community's ranting about, "two or three years and they are gone", seems largely related to Charlotte Church. But she is hardy typical, and if her singing career collapsed it was -- without meaning it unkindly -- a self-induced destruction. In fact it was a change of heart, and she is not doing too badly in her new career.

And contrary to what the opera community claims, Church's records are still selling well.

Of popera and crossover singers -- apart from Church -- who has only lasted two or three years?

Sarah Brightman, Russell Watson, Josh Groban, Sissel, etc, and even the most recent like Katherine Jenkins have all lasted longer than that, and show no sign of fading away.

Once again Te Kanawa is brainlessly gibbering. There is no evidence to back her comment. And even if it were true, it is hard to see why she should be so splenetic about it. What is the stupid creature's point? That she is so much better than everyone else?

Who are "they"?

Of well-known singers classified as "crossover" or "popera", Katherine Jenkins has had formal training; and Lesley Garret, Vittorio Grigolo, and Natasha Marsh have all had opera singing experience.

It is interesting that Marsh and those who have done opera with glowing reviews and then turned to "popera" or "crossover", are suddenly downgraded by the critics and opera community to be no more than mediocre or even very bad singers.

All of them -- whether with training or not, and whether with opera experience or not -- are attacked by the music purists in the same way that Te Kanawa attacked Westenra - as fakes, imposters, and for "dumbing down" classical music.

It has even been said that the acclaimed baritone Bryn Terfel risked losing the respect of the classical music community if he continued doing crossover!

It seems the real problem is not a lack of training so much as absurd musical snobbishness:

It is amusing how much the criticisms by Te Kanawa and her ilk resemble the attacks made on Shakespeare by the literary elite of his day:

"Yes, trust them not, for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie."

This is Henry Greene's famous attack on Shakespeare. This is not to suggest that Westenra or her ilk are in Shakespeare's class, but there is a remarkable similarity between their attackers' comments, attitudes, and hatred, and the attacks launched on Shakespeare.

Shakespeare, too, was accused of having no formal training, when the real problem was that he wasn't one of the right circle. Shakespeare was not one of University set of the time, and they believed -- as does the current opera community -- that they and only they were qualified or able to produce real art.

Shakespeare's detractors felt that he was a threat to their art while they -- an educated elite with superior knowledge and understanding -- were the protectors of it, and that they, in their special wisdom and understanding, were the sole abiters of what was art and good taste.

Today, the classical purists and opera community are taking the same attitude. But great art doesn't need protection; it will survive on its own merits. And it is laughable that a small group of opera snobs and classical purists believe themselves the sole arbiters of good taste, good singing, and what is or isn't art.

Of course nothing breeds envy like success, and just as Shakespeare's attackers considered themselves superior to Shakespeare in learning, status, and social class, and bitterly resented his success, so does Te Kanawa think herself superior and doubtless resents Westenra's and her likes success.

Te Kanawa has a monumental sense of self-importance. She must find it infuriating that someone she sees as her inferior in talent, standing, and social class is so successful and usurping some of the roles that once were hers.

"I get a lot of pleasure and satisfaction out of giving pleasure to people through my singing; that's fantastic, but it's only entertainment."
- Hayley Westenra

Hardly the words of a fake. It is Dame Kiri and her risibly pretentious, pompous, and grandiose friends in the opera community who are pretending to be something they are not. Dame Kiri is the fraud and the fake.

Plainly she adheres to the out-moded view that there is a hierarchy in music, with pop at the bottom, Jazz somewhat higher, classical higher still, and opera up in the realms of of gold beyond comparison with the rest.

But even if this were true, it wouldn't justify the classification of opera singers as superior to other vocalists, or the absurdly fallacious distinction the classical purists make between "classical" singers and "pop" singers.

There is a difference between the music of the great composers and a simple pop ditty, just as there is a difference between Shakespeare and a Mills and Boon novel.

But my reciting Shakespeare, no matter how well I do it, and no matter how much training in acting, literature, and language I've had doesn't make me a great writer or artist too.

It is only in the uniquely snobbish would of music that the type of distinction Dame Kiri trys to make can be found. In acting, an actor who is acclaimed for a Shakespearean role one month may be appearing in a popular TV show or a B grade film the next.

According to the purists, every opera singer -- however mediocre or even downright bad -- is in a completely -- a monumentally -- different class to any pop or popera singer.

But why is it that when a 20th rate opera singer sings Ave Maria it is high art: but a top flight and vocally much superior pop or popera singer sings it, it is rubbish?

Dame Kiri is the mountebank and the charlatan!
She is arrogantly and boastfully claiming to be a great artist and superior vocalist when it is doubtful she is anything more than a competent technician.

Dame Kiri's boastfulness -- and this is not the first time it has manifested itself by any means (it is all over her Internet site) -- is one of the ugly aspects of her rant that most seem to have overlooked.

It is not for her to tell us how wonderful she is. We will make up our own minds.

The opera and classical purists unremitting insistence on telling us how much superior they are to the popera and crossover singers becomes tiresome and ultimately unconvincing.

It is unconvincing not only because it seems a case of the "lady (or Dame) protesting too much", but because many of the criticisms are absurdly overstated or patently incorrect, and there is a surprisingly vicious and savage personal ingredient to so much of it.

We don't hear the world's number one boxer or tennis player telling us how much better they are than someone ranked 300 -- they don't need to.

What is also ironical is that the style of opera vocalism now in vogue that features singing high notes from the chest and projecting over an orchestra was lambasted when it first became popular as aristocratic and refined singing being overwhelmed by a vulgar bourgeois love of noisiness and melodrama.

The more muted vocal style of the popera singers and singers like Westenra is more similar to the "refined and aristocratic" style that preceded today's fruity blasting style.

Since opera vocalism has changed and evolved itself, it can't be claimed it is more "correct" or "better" way of singing -- even of singing classical music -- than any other.

The trouble is that for such critics any change is bad. Keep things as they are, close your eyes and maybe those horrid young people might go away and leave us alone with our music. Could these people be any more patronising? Indeed, without the revenue generated by crossover artists, "serious" classical practitioners who sell perhaps 15,000 copies of each release might not find an outlet for their music at all. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that crossover artists are good for classical music and maybe it is this that enrages the traditionalists so."
Click Here for Paul Connolly's Article

But Dame Kiri has had a reputation since the days of her early training for giving the impression that she considers herself better than others; and for her to resent someone she sees as her inferior in talent, class, and training somehow muscling in on her territory would be natural for her.

In a recent article about Dame Kiri's outburst, Graham Reid wrote:

"From the lofty heights of the opera world -- where doors are opened for you and diva behaviour (rudeness, self-obsession, demanding self-entitlement) is not only tolerated and accepted but actually admired -- it must be easy to look down on everyone else. And one gets the impression Dame Kiri does.

"Jobbing journalists who have had the misfortune of an encounter with her -- and I am pleased I never have, tetchy Neil Young was enough -- return to tell of being kept waiting for 90 minutes or more without explanation or apology, of dismissive answers and a generally superior air. That feedback is too common for it to be just rumour and innuendo."
See Graham Reid's Article Here

The Videos:
The first video below shows Dame Kiri describing how she has come to see the Maori folk song Pokarekare Ana as her "signature tune". This song has become rather famous in recent times, but not for Dame Kiri's version. It featured on Hayley Westenra's first album, which sold over two million copies, and was used in the advertisements for the album. It has rapidly become seen as Westenra's signature tune and she has sung it probably hundreds of times, and also performed duets of the song with many other singers, including Russell Watson, Bryn Terfel, and Aled Jones.

On YouTube, for example, there must be a dozen or so videos of Westenra singing it, but only three or four of Dame Kiri.

The second video is of Westenra singing at the New Zealand War Memorial function in London. This is the type of job that Dame Kiri would once have been the only serious candidate for.

These are just two examples of the younger woman getting publicity and kudos, that, from her lofty height as a fully-trained opera singer -- someone who has (in her view) reached the ultimate in vocal achievement and ranks so far above the mere pop and popera singers of the world that comparison is impossible -- Dame Kiri may resent.

The other videos feature versions of Pokarekare Ana, one by Dame Kiri and the others by Westenra.

On the one hand we have a singer who is very skilled in one area -- in an archaic form of Italian singing that is complicated and quite difficult to master technically, but is little appreciated outside of a small group. While revered by some as a superior form of vocalism, no sensible argument has ever been put forward to support this contention.

This singer -- Te Kanawa -- is worse than imcompetent when attempting genres outside her speciallity and incapable of performing in a variety of circumstances. Her reputation even in the opera world is mixed. While most accept that she is an excellent technician, many feel she is dry, uninvolved and without feeling.

On the other hand, Westenra is immensely versatile, and can sing more than competently in a wide variety of genres and quickly adapt to different circumstances. It's interesting that at the age of 21 she has featured on 7 film and TV scores, about the same number as Te Kanawa in Te Kanawa's 40 year career.

The module below shows some of the versatility Westenra has.