Dame Kiri Te Kanawa

The opera legend spent her illustrious career captivating audiences on the world stage but, as she tells Daniel Pembrey, she is just as at home in the sporting field

- Daniel Pembrey

"I'M A strong person and don't muck about with what I need to say," warns Dame Kiri Te Kanawa who, as a world-renowned soprano, is foremost associated with the gentility of opera. Her eyes sparkle warmly. "I put it down to my Māori heritage. My blood tribe, the Ngāti Porou, is a fighting community."

Strength mattered when performing in front of a 700 million worldwide television audience for the 1981 Royal wedding or commanding the stage at London's Royal Opera House: inhabiting operatic characters; dealing with the demands on the body of projecting pitch-perfect note after note, night after night, for two to three hours at a time.

Early in her career she took up fencing to enhance her reaction speeds on stage, her sense of balance and overall agility. "With sports, it's not that I mind losing but I do like to win," she says. Sir Jackie Stewart introduced her to clay shooting in the 1980s when she was in her forties - specifically, pro-am shoots at Gleneagles. Dame Kiri proved an unerring shot but needed to be careful: "I had to wear double ear protectors and was always wary of inhaling smoke." She preferred a 20-bore over-and-under Beretta, which she found kicked less than other guns. It also let her take aim more easily: "With the sideby-sides, I'd started to lose my sight," she says. "I loved the feeling when the clays went splat!"