Thelma Keepa Sings With Sadler's Wells

Te Ao Hou, June 1963, Page 36

Thelma Keepa Sings With Sadler's Wells Thelma Keepa lives in Wellington, where in private life she is Mrs Grabmaier. For many years she has been very well known as a solo singer at Ngati Poneke, and ten years ago, as a trained singer with a voice of great potential, she had many successes in competitions in Wellington and elsewhere. She was very interested in opera, and took the leading part in an operatic production by her singing teacher. But at this time there were not nearly as many openings for singers in New Zealand as there are today, and she had no more opportunities to sing in opera. She did give a fair number of radio recitals and toured with the 2YA Concert Party, but eventually she got fed up with being typed as a singer of only Maori songs: whenever they saw her, she claims, they said to themselves, ‘Good, here comes another Maori programme’.