A Diva in Dunedin and....GO GIANTS!!!!!

Kiri Te Kanawa - Photo Credit John Swannell

If I have an opportunity to experience a uniquely Kiwi experience while I am here, I don't want to miss it. When I saw this summer that Dunedin's 2010 Otago Festival of the Arts was to be highlighted by a rare recital from world-famous soprano and favorite daughter Kiri Te Kanawa, I knew I had to get tickets. More on the event below.
After my first visit to Dunedin, I had a lot of unfinished tourist business. It is a lovely college town, with lots to see and do before and after the Saturday night concert, such as appreciating the stately architecture

First Church of Otago

 and taking an excursion by train round-trip through the Taieri Gorge. I boarded at the downtown station

 for a half-day tour by the river and over trestles through the central Otago countryside.

 After that excursion, there was time to visit the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in the railway station. This country takes great pride in any of its athletes' achievements, especially on the world stage. Having only four million citizens, it is hard to compete in the big "prestige" sports, but they can excel in some lesser-known competitions like badminton, billiard, sheep-shearing, woodchopping, canoeing, yachting, and netball (a popular women's sport like old-school women's basketball without a backboard). All the greats, and of course the All Blacks, are represented.

A net + a ball=netball

The main event was Saturday night at the town hall. (Full disclosure: I am fairly ignorant of opera, and for a long time thought she was Japanese-American.) The Dunedin Town Hall venue has been very important to her, having won a competition to launch her career in 1965, and singing for the queen in1970.  Our seats were third row center, maybe 15-20 feet from the diva and her piano accompanist Terence Dennis. She is a beautiful woman, now in her mid-60's, part Maori, part Pakeha (European) heritage, with somewhat of a reputation for speaking perhaps too candidly. A few years ago, she caused a bit of a flap when she said something about too many Maoris being on welfare, and this year stepped in it when she dissed YouTube sensation Susan Boyle. Like a few in her demanding field, she may be a bit tightly-wound. In the second half, there was stir in the audience that caused her to stop in mid-song. When she found out a woman had fainted, and was to be carried out by ambulance crew, she tried a little stage patter, but the whole situation was a bit tense. (It reminded me of when I saw "Pulp Fiction" at Coast Cinemas and the film broke in the middle of the adrenaline-injection-in-the-heart scene!) She composed herself and resumed. It was a privilege to hear that amazing trained voice hit those notes. The program was classical (Scaraltti, Vivaldi, Handel, Liszt, Strauss, etc) and some were disappointed she didn't sing anything from her best-selling CD of Maori songs. A wordless Vocaliseby Rachmaninoff and three encores were considered the highlights. I didn't know what I was listening to, but I liked it and was glad I went.

Sunday was time to head home, especially since I heard snow might be on the way to Dunedin. We have learned the weather here is quite changable (an island nation, not far from the Southern Ocean and Antarctica is the explanation, or so they say). We made time to tramp uphill to a geometrical volcanic basalt formation called The Organ Pipes (like Devil's Postpile near Mono Lake, but much smaller).

Great views, worth the sweat. Traveling north, we ducked in out of a torrential but brief rainstorm to have lunch in Moeraki at Fleur's (I had the conger eel, Fayne the blue cod), and back to Timaru.

We were alerted by a few people in Mendo of the existence nearby of a kiwi artist Ben Woollcombe who lived in Albion for a while and now is back in South Canterbury. His family was quite prominent; in fact there is a Woollcombe Street here in Timaru. He very graciously invited us out to his place in Peel Forest for a visit and a bite to eat, including freshly gathered honey from his bees. Last week there was a showing of his watercolors in Geraldine, and I captured a photo of the artist and his painting of Ten Mile north of FB.

Ben Woollcombe

And next-to-last, but definitely not least, I have been following the Giants closely, am very pleased for all of Giantdom, and (not to jinx them) but I really think this is their year. Maybe it took me leaving the country. I subscribed to a MLB site that allows me to stream the video of all the post-season and/or follow on the KNBR radio feed. The problem is I didn't calculate how much bandwidth I would need. My home broadband, Cinderella-pumpkin-like, converted to "dial-up" which is slower than molasses on Quaaludes. Yesterday, to follow crucial Game Six of the NLCS, I started out at one cafe for lunch, then to the library where they have Wi-Fi (where I am blogging now), and after it closed at 4 to another Internet Cafe. But all's well that ends well, as someone once said. GO ORANGE AND BLACK!!! DO IT FOR EMILY S AND JUDY V!!

Finally, excitement is in the Southern air. My sisters Athena and Cheryl have landed safely in Auckland, and are making their way down to Wellington, where we will meet up Halloween. I will have two weeks off, and we have been looking forward for a year to our 5-day trek on the Milford Track Nov 5-9. It will be GREAT!