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Kiri Te Kanawa inspires a kind of affection that is accorded to few prima donnas, for the warmth and expressiveness of her singing, for her natural ease in operatic roles, and particularly for a sunny, outgoing personality that is clearly projected in her stage presence. Both the voice and the personality come through effectively in this presentation, which preserves the best moments from two concerts she gave in 1990 and 1991, with her own introductions and comments. The first, given outdoors during a homecoming tour of her native New Zealand, shows her achieving a remarkable feat of personality to match her excellent singing; she establishes a sense of intimate communication with an audience of 75,000. First, she sings an aria from an opera that was not otherwise part of her repertoire: the intense, anguished "Pace, pace" from Verdi's La forza del destino. This program is designed to show her versatility; besides arias by Verdi and Puccini, it includes My Fair Lady's "I Could Have Danced All Night," sung in a perfectly idiomatic style that would be out of reach for many opera stars, and a couple of songs in New Zealand's Maori language. A nice touch for a homecoming concert is her performance of "Home, Sweet Home" in Maori. The second half of the program is a selection of music by Handel and Mozart, given in a sharply contrasting environment: a snowy evening in the exquisite baroque chapel, designed by Christopher Wren, at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, England. A highlight of this segment, and a rare experience, is Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate, sung in its entirety, rather than the familiar, brilliant "Alleluia" segment that other sopranos use by itself simply to show off their technique. --Joe McLellan
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