The fact that the house had no electricity only added to its enchantment somehow. ‘There was no power. We would drive up from Gisborne and my grandfather would get out the paraffin lamps from the shed,’ recalls Judy. ‘It was a huge big event down there. Stan and Pat stayed on the poultry farm because they had to work but there was my grandparents, mum, Kiri and all the locals would pile in too.
‘Christmas in those days was like a fairy tale for us and I always remember it as a happy time. Kiri and me used to go into the woods looking for big red toadstools. Sometimes we would sit in the trees very quietly, keeping very still, and wait for the fairies to come,’ she says. Kiri’s love of the open spaces of Lake Taupo had been inherited from her shy, self-contained father.
‘Daddy’ could not have presented a quieter, kinder contrast to the gregarious Nell. When she had the house filled with guests, Tom would blend into the background, a benign, watchful influence. ‘Tom was always there but he was always very quiet,’ recalled Judy. ‘If there was a big pile of people he would be stuck in the corner with his glass of ginger ale.’
Tom’s even temper was the stuff of legend within the family. Judy recalls only seeing him lose his composure once. ‘He was working on a car motor and said “bugger” when he hit his thumb with a spanner,’ she laughed. His love of speed seems to have been his only rebellious outlet. While Nell slept on the drive to Taupo the girls would encourage him to put his foot down on the treacherous, twisting inland roads west of Gisborne. ‘He used to drive like Stirling Moss. He was a brilliant driver, fast but not dangerous,’ recalled Judy. ‘My grandmother would doze off and his foot would go down and away we’d go. When she woke she’d bark: “Slow down, Tom, slow down!” It was hysterical. He’d slow right down and keep looking over at her until she nodded off again and then he’d roar off again. She’d wake up, shout at him, and on it went. Every trip was like that.’
The young Kiri lived for the mornings when Tom would wake her with a gentle kiss at 5 a.m. as he left for work. She would slip out into the dawn and spend the day sitting in the cab of his truck. At Taupo she would sit on the edge of the lake in silence as he fished for trout or simply took in the scene. Sometimes father and daughter would sleep out under the stars, ‘to be there when the fish rose in the morning’.
‘What was wonderful about him was you didn’t have to talk,’ she said later. ‘We used to look at the lake and we’d say nothing. For hours. That was the best part.’
For Kiri, such serenity was in increasingly short supply back at Grey Street. By the time Judy and Nola moved in, the evening get-togethers had taken on the air of a showcase for Nell’s prodigious discovery. If the gathering was confined to the immediate family, Nell would command the stage as usual. If there were visitors present, however, there was only one star. ‘Kiri was the big thing,’ said Judy. ‘Always, whenever anybody came around, I would have to sing,’ Kiri confessed later. ‘I felt at the time like a performing monkey.’
For large parts of her life, Nell had known little more than disappointment and disillusionment. With Tom she had, at last, found security. In Kiri, however, she glimpsed an opportunity for something more. She would not be the first mother to find her life revitalised and ultimately taken over by the vicarious thrill of her child’s success. Few stage mothers would drive their daughters from such unpromising beginnings to such unthinkable heights, however. By Kiri’s twelfth birthday, Nell’s ambition for her daughter had already far outgrown Grey Street and Gisborne.
Lying on her bed upstairs, Nell would listen avidly to the many musical competitions broadcast on the radio at the time. The contests had proliferated all over New Zealand and Australia. In 1956 the Mobil Petroleum Company had added to their credibility and popularity by sponsoring the most prestigious of New Zealand’s domestic contests, the biennial competition from then on known as the Mobil Song Quest.
The competition had produced its share of stars within New Zealand, none greater than the Auckland nun widely regarded as the finest teacher in the country. Sister Mary Leo had been born Kathleen Agnes Niccol, the eldest child of a respectable Auckland shipping clerk and his wife Agnes. In later life, she was mysterious about her exact birthdate in April 1895, as it fell only five months after her devoutly Catholic parents’ wedding. Kathleen Niccol became a schoolteacher and budding singer before, at the age of twenty-eight, she walked into the sanctuary of St Mary’s Convent in Auckland and the Order of the Sisters of Mercy. She never left.
A college had first been established at the convent in 1929. Two decades later, in 1949, Sister Mary Leo persuaded the Order to allow her to establish her own independent, non-denominational music school within the St Mary’s grounds. While she concentrated on voice coaching, four other nuns were enlisted to teach piano, violin, cello and organ. Each year as many as 200 aspiring musicians from all faiths and all corners of New Zealand received their education there. In the aftermath of the war, Sister Mary Leo’s pupils had begun to dominate the lucrative singing competitions. It had been her success with an emotionally frail but extraordinarily gifted singer, Mina Foley, that had transformed her into a national celebrity.
An orphan, Foley had begun singing as an alto in the St Mary’s Choir at the age of thirteen. At sixteen, encouraged by Sister Mary Leo, she had won the prestigious John Court Memorial Aria in Auckland. From there she went on to win almost every domestic singing competition. Her successes turned Foley and her teacher into stars. Crowds of well-wishers and pressmen followed them to their triumphs. When, in 1950, they travelled to Australia for the most lucrative of all the Antipodean prizes, the Melbourne Sun Aria competition, most of New Zealand tuned in on the radio.
Foley’s freakish range allowed her voice to reach across three and a half octaves. She had already been dubbed the ‘Voice of the Century’ by the New Zealand media. By 1951, thanks largely to a scholarship from the British Council, the singer had been accepted as a pupil of Toti Del Monte in Italy.
When Nell discovered that Foley was due to visit Gisborne before leaving for Europe, she wasted no time in booking two tickets for the concert at the Regent Theatre. If she had hoped the trip would inspire Kiri she was soon rewarded. Kiri still recalled the impact of the moment thirty years later. She remembered how Foley had taken to the stage in a wonderful gown, ‘all in green net, with off-the-shoulder puffed sleeves and sparkling jewellery everywhere. I remember it so vividly. She used to wear her hair pulled back with one ringlet trailing forward over her shoulder. It was the most awful style but at the time I thought it was marvellous.’
Kiri was transfixed by Foley’s voice. ‘She sang and sang and I never for one moment stopped gazing at her. I think it was then that my mother realised I was going to concentrate on music and nothing else.’ In the wake of the Foley concert, Nell’s dreams began to solidify. By the beginning of 1956 she was ready to swing into action.
For all its historic importance, the East Cape was far from the hub of New Zealand life. In the 1950s and sixties it was regarded as one of the least dynamic and most isolated regions of New Zealand. Nell knew that a move north to Auckland was vital if Kiri was to make any progress. Nell began by telephoning St Mary’s in Auckland and asking to be put directly through to its most celebrated teacher. It was to be the first of many memorable confrontations between the irresistible force that was Nell Te Kanawa and the immovable object that was Sister Mary Leo.
‘I have a daughter who sings very well,’ Nell announced, matter of factly. ‘Will you take her on?’
Sotto voce, Sister Mary Leo explained that, as a pupil of a school other than St Mary’s, Kiri was ineligible for her classes until she was eighteen. In other words, no, she could not.
Nell was in no mind to be deterred by such a rejection, however. She began her efforts to persuade Tom that the family, including Kiri, Nola and Judy, should move to Auckland and that Kiri should be installed at St Mary’s. She had clearly missed her true vocation as a saleswoman. Soon Tom had not only agreed to put the Grey Street house up for auction, but to sell his business as well.
Kiri, however, could