Day two of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall’s visit to New Zealand proved to be an eventful one.
The Duchess was serenade by Hannah Grace in what she calls the biggest performance of her young career. Given the approval by Camilla, third-year Te Whawa student sang a solo during ‘Pungawerewere’ alongside 50 of her classmates.
This isn’t the first time Grace has had a big performance, she has also sung with the British rock group, The Rolling Stones, but to Grace singing for Camilla takes the cake.
“Performing to her royal highness was great,” she told NZ Newswire.
“She’s very real, also quite modest and patient. She seems like a patient woman. I sang with the Rolling Stones last, but this is definitely up there.”
The visit started with a mihi whakatu in which Grace starred before they showed the Duchess the costume construction workshop and a variety of work by students.
Camilla spoke to the students about their costumes, questioning how long they took to make.
“I am sorry I am not going to see the end result,” she said. “This is fantastic.”
She also got a sneak peek into a rehearsal of the Dance Studies graduation production of Paquita (Grand Pas) while Prince Charles was at Tawa College for a separate engagement.
Charles was greeted at Tawa College by a fierce haka by the students. Charles was later seated next to head boy Joshua Nightingale who spoke before his arrival that “it’s the best time to be head students”.
The school choir put on a performance and then Prince Charles was shown products and marketed in an economics class that teaches students how to run their own business.
Eco-friendly Charles’ eye caught a glimpse of an organic shower before other students demonstrated their cricket and rugby skills. Charles met with the students who all lined up one boy remarking “I touched his hand. I’m going to sell it for like a million dollars,”
Charles and Camilla then met up for events in Dunedin where Charles got more than he bargained for with a good snog.
Lesley Hayde, originally of Yorkshire shouted out to Prince Charles while out on a public walk.
He came out, I shouted, ‘Give us a kiss, give us a kiss, Charlie’,” Hayde said afterwards.
“I couldn’t believe it when he turned around and came towards me … and he said, ‘oh I don’t know if we should kiss”, and I just grabbed him and we got a kiss, and we got a kiss from Camilla afterwards.”
No surprise there was a “great big struggle” with security.
“I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to end up in that big prison behind me”.
“But it was brilliant. It was a good laugh.”
Oh dear, what an awful spelling mistake. The young lady “serenaded” the Royal couple. Also, the Rolling Stones is a British Rock Group.
Yes, that’s what I thought too. Looked up ‘serinated’ – there is a word serenated, as opposed to serenaded, which basically means the same. However, ‘serenaded’ is used far more often and in any case it certainly does not have an ‘i’ in it. As for The Rolling Stones, I can only assume that she is far to young to know, LOL. I also wish the author had supplied a meaning to ‘Pungawerewere’, mihi whakatu, ect so that I didn’t have to look it up in order to know what the heck was going on. (sorry about the different fonts!)