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New Zealand opera star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has been credited by a local mayor with keeping vandals away from his city centre because they find her singing "bloody hideous".
Bob Harvey, the mayor of Waitakere City near Auckland, said classical music has been playing through speakers in an area between the city's transport hub and council offices for the last three years.
There has been no defacing or damaging of art works and sculptures in the area since the music was switched on.
"We have been playing... Mozart, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky and a dash of Dame Kiri," Harvey was reported as saying in the New Zealand Herald Thursday.
"I think probably it is Dame Kiri that does it, but (young vandals) don't stay around long.
"If it's not your music, and you really don't like it all, why would you, how could you, stay around?"
Meanwhile, in the southern city of Christchurch officials are planning to play Barry Manilow songs to deter aggressive youths who gather in a central shopping plaza.
