1. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

2. Childhood/Family Kiri Te Kanawa was born in Gisborne, North Island, NZ in 1944 by the name of Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron. She has Maori and European ancestry, but not a lot is known about her birth parents as she was adopted by a local couple, Tom and Nell Te Kanawa at five weeks of age. The Te Kanawa’s then named their daughter Kiri, the Maori name for bell. She is an only child and is aged 71 as of today. In 1967, she married Desmond Park, an Australian engineer whom she met in London, and they adopted two children. First they adopted a daughter called Antonia, born 1976 and then three years after, a son Thomas, born 1979.

3. Career Kiri Te Kanawa is a famous NZ, soprano singer, and for almost as long as she can remember, she sang. Her first performances were on a little stage in the Te Kanawa's house, complete with a curtain; "the curtains would come back," she recalled, "and I'd get up and sing." Kiri’s mother told her one morning that she had seen a wondrous vision of Kiri singing at London's Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Soon, for Te Kanawa's mother, transforming that vision into a reality became her own life's dream. Te Kanawa began her remarkable rise singing at a local school. From there, she would go on to perform at weddings and funerals. The money she pocketed helped pay for her basic necessities, like clothes, as well as for her singing lessons. By 1956, wanting to do whatever they could for their daughter's talent, the Te Kanawa's had packed up for Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, so Kiri could study with a former opera singer Te Kanawa was plucked from class in the middle of her lessons to work on her singing whenever Sister Mary was free, and as a consequence, her grades suffered. Within two years, Te Kanawa was asked to leave St. Mary's. By 1965, she had won most of the South Pacific's major vocal prizes. She also sang in music show choruses and nightclubs during one memorable performance, Te Kanawa, dressed all in white, serenaded a drunken club crowd with "Ave Maria." Then, at age 21, having banked her prize money and earnings, not to mention a scholarship from the New Zealand government, she set off across the globe to England. There, she would finally sing in her first opera. Her first big event was finding former Vienna opera star Vera Rozsa, who became her singing coach. By 1970, fulfilling her mother's dream, Te Kanawa made her debut at the famed Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, singing the roles of Xenia in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. She also appeared that season as a flower maiden in Wagner's Parsifal, but the performance that began her immense rise was as Countess Almaviva in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in December of 1971. For that, she earned 50 to 100 English pounds per week, a salary that remained unchanged for the rest of her five-year contract.

4. Accomplishments Dame Kiri was offered the role of the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro at Covent Garden in 1971, after a wildly successful audition. Conductor Sir Colin Davis said: "I couldn't believe my ears. I've taken thousands of auditions, but it was such a fantastically beautiful voice.“ By 1965, she had won most of the South Pacific's major vocal prizes Dame Kiri impressed the London Opera Centre in 1966 - so much so, that she enrolled without an audition to study under Vera Rózsa and James Robertson. Her teachers noticed her gift for captivating audiences, despite her initial lack of technique. It is for her performance at the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in St Paul's Cathedral that Kiri Te Kanawa is best remembered by many New Zealanders. An estimated television audience of 600 million people saw her perform Handel's ‘Let the bright seraphim’. The following year she was made a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. Kiri performed at the opening of the Commonwealth Games in 2006, singing Happy Birthday to Her Majesty the Queen.

5. Photos Effie in real life The Hunger Games Chins up smiles on

6. Problems/Obstacles When Kiri was young she nearly drowned when a boat capsized, trapping her underneath, until her father managed to dive down and rescue her. Te Kanawa's mother died not long after her 1971 debut at Covent Garden. Kiri had a serious bout of illness that forced her to quit performing for three months, at that time they had adopted their two children and the marriage could not hold, she and her husband divorced in the late 1990s.Kiri said “if you're going to have a career like this, I think there's huge problems”. She blames her career for the break- up of her marriage and suggests that it took a toll on her children.

8. By Rebecca