Kiri Te Kanawa Kiri Te Kanawa Dame Kiri Janette Te Kanawa (; born Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron, 6 March 1944) is a New Zealand soprano. She has a full lyric soprano voice, which has been described as "mellow yet vibrant, warm, ample and unforced". Te Kanawa has received accolades in many countries, singing a wide array of works in many languages dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries. She is particularly associated with the works of Mozart, Strauss, Verdi, Handel and Puccini, and has found considerable success in portraying princesses, nobility, and other similar characters on stage. Though she rarely sang opera
Claire Tomalin Claire Tomalin Claire Tomalin (born Claire Delavenay on 20 June 1933) is an English author and journalist, known for her biographies on Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Pepys, Jane Austen, and Mary Wollstonecraft. Tomalin was born Claire Delavenay on 20 June 1933 in London, the daughter of French academic Émile Delavenay and English composer Muriel Herbert. Tomalin was educated at Hitchin Girl’s Grammar School, a former state grammar school in Hitchin in Hertfordshire, and Dartington Hall School, a former boarding school in Dartington, near Totnes, in Devon, and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge. Tomalin has written several noted