Concerts at the Palace
Posted on 19 December 2013
Earlier this month Dame Kiri was invited to sing the National anthem to open a series of gala concerts in the grounds of Buckingham Palace to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s coronation. Dame Kiri said she was “honoured and thrilled” to be part of the coronation festival which would be a wonderful celebration of the Queen’s long reign.
Louise Alder (refer UK scholarship story) and Phillip Rhodes, representing the Foundation were invited to sing a duet. Read extracts from the message subsequently received from Phillip describing the occasion…….. “I have just returned home from one of the most exciting jobs I have sung to date. All thanks go to Dame Kiri for putting me forward and to Gillian Newson for her hard work in making sure it worked out! The job of course was participating in the Coronation Festival Gala concerts featuring a wide variety of artists performing a varied programme in the gardens of Buckingham Palace - in the presence of HM the Queen and members of the royal family. “I was so excited to be on the programme and the wonderful memories will live with me forever. I was fortunate enough to sing the duet La ci darem la mano, with Louise Alder, who was such a wonderful colleague (and patient as she had to tie my bow tie every night!).
I felt very confident leading up to the concert as Dame Kiri had made herself available over two weekends to run through the piece for the show as well as fine tune my voice production and look into some new repertoire.”