Looking back on her career, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa remembers Dunedin as a place where two things happened which were significant stepping stones towards what came later.
"I first went there in 1965 for the Mobil Song Quest.
"Winning that was a major boost for a 21-year-old. And it was also in Dunedin that I first met the Queen - which is something you don't forget.
She admits that on her first contact with Otago in 1965 she was a bit taken aback by the cold.
"It was midwinter - July - but I adjusted to it after a while."
Central heating was not common in those days and yes, it is true that she wore trousers under her concert gown.
"I also wore a lucky greenstone pendant - and 45 years later, I still wear it."
The 1965 event was her second try at the Mobil Quest. Placed runner-up to Malvina Major two years before, she was accustomed to the idea of the judges not being visible.
"It was the same in 1963. They were in a studio somewhere else, listening just to the singing and not being distracted by anyone's appearance.
"It seemed the right way to do it. In Dunedin, they had to be brought over in cars to the hall after the performance from wherever their studio was."
The cold rapidly turned to warmth when Dame Kiri was announced on the Town Hall stage as winner of the Mobil Quest.
"There were tears, of course, and a dash to get to a phone to tell my parents back in Auckland. My father was pleased - he liked to see me doing well - but my mother was absolutely thrilled. She saw it as a step forward to the major career she always hoped I'd have."
The prize money, 300, was immediately earmarked for a fund to travel for further singing study overseas which, one year later, she did.
It was a total coincidence that Dame Kiri and Patricia Payne sang the same item for their Mobil operatic entry.
"We simply didn't know," recalls Kiri.
"Patricia chose the Habanera from Carmen, and so did I. It was a surprise."
Separated in the Mobil final by only the slimmest margin (Patricia Payne was runner-up to Dame Kiri), both women moved on into dazzling careers.
In 1965, Patricia Payne and Dame Kiri were both young mezzo-sopranos but, on the advice of James Robertson and Richard Bonyng, the young Dame Kiri's mezzo range was moved gently upwards into the soprano range, with great success.
Patricia Payne's, meanwhile, remained mezzo and developed into a world-class instrument.
Each of them became a star in their separate fields. Both appeared at every major opera house in the world, both sang on a raft of major operatic recordings, both frequently partnered the world's most famous tenors - Pavarotti, Domingo and Carerras - and both have been awarded honorary doctorates.
Twenty years after they first met in Dunedin, Kiri and Patricia were reunited in London on the stage of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in the gala production of Eugene Onegin.
Five years after her Mobil win, Dame Kiri returned to Dunedin, this time to sing in a Town Hall concert for the British Royal Family, "in March - lovely, not at all cold!".
Again it was the Habanera, but this time with the NZSO and a 250-voice Dunedin choir. Afterwards, along with Dunedin civic leaders, Dame Kiri was invited on to the Britannia in Otago Harbour.
"When I was introduced to the Queen, she smiled and remarked to one of her aides - 'I think she should be at Covent Garden, don't you?'
"And, I was convinced that the Queen could just ring up Covent Garden and arrange it.
"After all, it's called the Royal Opera House.
"It took me several years to realise things didn't work that way."
As the world knows, Covent Garden asked her anyway, without any intervention from the Queen.
But four years after the Dunedin concert, Prince Charles went to see The Marriage of Figaro and realised that the soprano singing beautifully was the young woman he'd heard in New Zealand. From then on, he went to Covent Garden to hear her as often as possible.
When the time came to plan his marriage, Prince Charles said to the wedding's music director Sir David Wilcox: "Let's ask Kiri".
Dame Kiri's agent phoned and said: "Charles wants you to sing at his wedding".
She replied: "I don't remember knowing anyone called Charles. Why didn't you say no?".
But they sorted it out, and her singing was later estimated to have been heard by the biggest audience of any singer in recorded history - 600 million people.
Back in London, Dame Kiri has been judging the newly-established classical talent quest to award the recently-established Kiri Prize.
More than 900 aspiring opera singers entered.
Dame Kiri says: "This is nothing like the television Idol shows. This is radio.
"The judging is based only on quality of voice - what they can hear rather than what they can see, just as we were in the Mobil Quest.
"Television quests have an impact - mass appeal can make some performers very popular - but classical singing is still based on purity of sound."
That the BBC is presenting this classical singer contest, with its Kiri Prize, causes one to wonder if classical singing is holding its ground. Do young people move towards popular music because it suggests greater financial reward?
"That can't be the only reason," she says, pointing out that aiming to be a pop singer doesn't automatically bring fame and fortune.
"Whatever type of singing a person wants to do, they need to have the talent for that type to succeed.
"Pop and rap are perfectly valid music styles. But if a person doesn't want to sing classical, and prefers to sing pop or rap, they'd still need that kind of talent.
"A rap singer couldn't sing Mozart but then I could never sing rap. To each his own.
"I once said I wished I could sing like Tina Turner, who has a wonderful talent. But I simply can't sing like her."
Dame Kiri emphasises that while in some areas of singing natural talent is all that's needed, a student with classical aspirations has a much harder road.
"Discipline, stickability, language training, rigidly good health, teamwork - it can be compared with the taking up of a demanding sport."
Dame Kiri makes a good case for classical music and opera still holding relevance in a contemporary age.
"Technology has actually enhanced the availability of opera - CDs and DVDs bring the finest operas right into the house.
"Many TV commercials are using opera as their backing music and the live transmissions of opera performances into worldwide cinemas is proving a huge success.
"For many people, the real excitement is being there in a theatre. But for those who can't, there are far more alternatives now than before."
This year, Dame Kiri has sung in one season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, another Strauss opera season in Germany, concerts in Russia with the Moscow Symphony, recitals throughout Europe, America and Britain (including a concert in the Tower of London) and she has received a lifetime achievement award from the British recording industry.
Midyear she met up with Dunedin's Terence Dennis, who travels to Italy to work with her as one of the music coaches in the Te Kanawa-Solti Acadamia she has established in Tuscany.
Back in London she hosted a British television special What Makes a Great Soprano, besides working as judge on the six-week BBC Kiri Prize.
Her schedule leaves no time for a former love of waterskiing, seldom any time for golf, and only an occasional foray in clay-bird shooting.
Why, then, did she consider singing a concert in Dunedin?
The answer is immediate.
"I've heard good things about the festival there so, when they asked, I said 'Yes'." - Max Cryer
• THE SHOW
Dame Kiri is scheduled to deliver a two-hour recital in the Dunedin Town Hall at 8pm on October 16 - the final Saturday of the Otago Festival of the Arts. It is billed as her "first ever" solo recital in Dunedin. She will be accompanied by her "preferred" piano accompanist, Dunedin's Terence Dennis. The programme includes works by Mozart, Strauss, Gustavino and Puccini.
Kiri Te Kanawa spoke to the Otago Daily Times following her Mobil Song Quest win in 1965.
The winner of the 1965 Mobil Song Quest Miss Kiri Te Kanawa was "absolutely thrilled" and cried with joy when the result was announced.
After an excited telephone call to her mother on Saturday night and a promise to take home a bottle of champagne, Kiri began to realise she had won, the ODT reported.
She had plans for the 300 prize money.
"I am going to sing in Sydney in September and I leave for England in February," she said.
"As yet, I have no teachers planned in England and nothing lined up but I hope to stay there for about four years."
Kiri, who lists her hobbies as golf and waterskiing, will certainly find her prize money valuable for she devotes her life to singing and has no other occupation.
"Something had to go and it was work," she said. "I managed without much money for a while."
Kiri, who looked striking in a crystalline long frock with matching tight trousers designed for her by an Auckland designer, produced a lucky greenstone charm she always carries round with her.
"I definitely had this with me," she said.
