Do you have musical treasures cluttering up your garage?
Posted on 15 April 2016
Ray Beilby (Queensland, Australia) was recently rummaging through boxes of ‘junk’ in his garage. Can you imagine his surprise (and ours) when he discovered among his collection of long forgotten programmes two highly significant publications from opera performances featuring Dame Kiri:
- The 1968 Chelsea Opera Group productionof Idomeneo staged at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in which Dame Kiri played the role of Idamante (one of Dame Kiri’s early public performances). Ray found the programme of particular interest because , while it gives brief highlights of the careers of the performers, it says no more about Kiri Te Kanawa than ‘she comes from New Zealand’;
- The 1971 Royal Opera House Covent Garden production of Marriage of Figaro. It was Dame Kiri’s sensational debut in this production as Mozart’s Countess Almaviva which gained her legendary status almost overnight.
Ray was quick to realise the value of these finds and offered them to Dame Kiri who has in turn donated them back to the Archive of New Zealand Music within the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington (NZ) who are already holding many donations of material relating to her singing career. The collection includes newspaper and magazine articles, cartoons, programmes, photographs, correspondence, posters, awards, videos and personally commissioned arrangements.