Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (born March 6, 1944), is a well-known New Zealander opera singer of Maori ancestry. In 1981, she was seen and heard around the world by an estimated 600 million people when she sang Handel's "Let the Bright Seraphim" at the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. In 1965, she won a singing competition and received a grant to study in London. In 1971, Te Kanawa made her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Countess Almaviva, in The Marriage of Figaro. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1974 as Desdemona. In subseqent years, she performed at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Paris Opera, Sydney Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, San Francisco Opera, Munich and Cologne, adding the Mozart roles of Donna Elvira, Pamina, and Fiordiligi in addition to Italian roles such as Mimi in La bohème. Te Kanawa has a particular affinity for the heroines of Richard Strauss: the Marschallin, the Countess in Capriccio, and the title role in Arabella.