Peter Jonas

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 40:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is an opera supremo. At the age of three, his parents observed him trying to conduct Rossini. In his teens, he resolved to run a great opera house. Such ambition inevitably met with setbacks. When he applied to sweep the stage of the London Coliseum in 1974, he was turned down flat. But fate protected his greatest wish, and eleven years later, he walked through its doors as the boss. His flair for business, combined with his passionate love of music, have transformed the fortunes of the company he runs and made it one of the most successful and innovative in the country. He is the general director of the English National Opera, Peter Jonas. Peter, there are few people who win the job of their dreams. I mean, how much has the dream been shattered by the reality?

Peter Jonas1:15

Not at all. I mean, I still feel as though I've died and gone to heaven. And in that heaven there are extraordinary r rewards. After a great deal of hard graft and a great deal of hard work and some exasperating moments, there are still those rewards when the house lights go down and when an opera starts or a performance starts or one is on tour and a performance starts in front of another public.

Presenter1:35

But there must be uh some moments of hell too. I mean, what about the first night of a new production?

Peter Jonas1:40

I probably uh initiate a kind of nervous fever in myself two hours before the performance. I walk around the dressing rooms, I walk around the theatre, I always visit the stage itself, and actually go on to the stage and look at the scenery, and look at the the empty theatre beforehand.

Presenter1:54

But what happens perhaps when you suddenly hear a wrong note or you know something's gone wrong?

Peter Jonas1:58

I wince, I sweat.

Presenter2:01

But it's a it's a peculiarly impotent position to be in, isn't it? You can't actually be on the stage performing it, and neither can you tell the audience what to think.

Peter Jonas2:10

Yes, it's probably even more impotent than being a football manager, because at least he can shout and scream from the touchline, or actually go on to the pitch sometime, although illegally. It's a very, very difficult position to be in. Uh you have the responsibility to the community, to the public, to your board, to the government, if you like, to society for what goes on in the English National Opera, but you don't actually take part in the performance, so you're very much a non-playing captain.

Presenter2:33

Any superstitions?

Peter Jonas2:35

Millions of them, including the lucky suit, rather like Don Revy. Um I have a lucky suit, or I have two lucky suits. He unfortunately had one that was a summer suit, which he had to wear all winter when he'd won the championship. I have a lucky summer suit and a lucky winter suit, and I wear them for each first night, including a selection of lucky ties.

Presenter2:52

And what happens um then when you go home?

Peter Jonas2:56

After first nights I find myself feeling very empty after after after the performance is over.

Presenter3:01

Rumour has it that that you weep.

Presenter3:03

Sometimes.

Presenter3:04

Why should you do that?

Peter Jonas3:06

I think it's just the explosion of a lot of nervous energy and the release of a lot of tension makes one moved by the occasion, and actually moved by the hard work of all one's colleagues.

Presenter3:16

So will you cry or or will you die of loneliness on the desert island? What do you think?

Peter Jonas3:20

I'll probably cry a lot. I'm I'm quite a blubber, really.

Presenter3:23

But music, of course, is going to be your your eternal comfort on the island. And what's what's the first piece that you'd put on your wind up gramophone?

Peter Jonas3:31

The first piece is Humperdink's Hansel and Gretel.

Peter Jonas3:35

I've chosen

Peter Jonas3:36

The prayer of Hansel and Gretel when they're in the forest. It's something that reminds me of every aspect of my life, and will remind me of every incident of my life, because it's a an opera that's accompanied me on all of them.

Speaker 33:58

Fuel to me, feel so high to my time.

Speaker 34:17

Why do wide eyes foolish?

Speaker 34:26

Tomai to my house.

Presenter4:45

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Elizabeth Grummer singing Arbensvilisch Schlafengen from Humperdings, Hansel and Gretel, with a Philharmonia orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karian.

Presenter4:55

Well now I've floated, Peter, the idea of your being some kind of child prodigy conducting Rossini, aged three. W would you like to clarify that?

Peter Jonas5:03

I wasn't a prodigy at all, and of course I don't conduct. If there are stories of me conducting standing on a sofa in front of a mirror, it's only because, listening to Toscanini's thieving magpie overture, it inspired a young child to dance around the room and prob probably wave a baton.

Presenter5:16

Can you remember the first concert you went to?

Peter Jonas5:18

Yes, I do. It was The Dream of Gorontius, funnily enough, by Edward Elgar. I think it was around one Easter time. I was very, very young. I think I was four.

Presenter5:24

And you can't do it.

Peter Jonas5:27

And I'm not sure I made head or tail of it, but I know I was very moved by by the phrase take me away.

Presenter5:33

And the first opera, can you recall that?

Peter Jonas5:35

The first opera I went to was Flying Dutchman, but the memory of it is is very, very far and distant, and uh I do remember being extraordinarily moved.

Presenter5:42

But as I understand it, there was absolutely no history of this in your family at all. But you and your sister were prodigiously talented.

Peter Jonas5:50

Yes, she was much more than me in a practical sense. She was a very, very gifted pianist at a very young age.

Presenter5:56

You are, it has to be said, of extravagantly mixed descent. Can you would you care to describe it?

Peter Jonas6:01

Yes, my father was German Jewish and he was brought up in Germany in Hamburg uh and only left that country in the mid-thirties. My mother is a pretty exotic mixture. Um she was born in Jamaica of Lebanese and Scottish extraction and spent a lot of time well most of our early life there and also in in the South American countries.

Presenter6:21

And she came of a huge family.

Peter Jonas6:23

Huge family, she was the second of seventeen children.

Presenter6:25

Good heavens.

Peter Jonas6:26

Uh from the same parents and uh a vast tribe, really, and I suppose I have relations, hundreds of first cousins all over the world, and the result is that you don't know any of them.

Presenter6:35

But you were born in London.

Peter Jonas6:36

I was born in London. My parents met in London. My father was interned at the beginning of the war. And then released and they stayed and I was born in 1946.

Presenter6:46

Shall we have your second record?

Peter Jonas6:48

This is um

Peter Jonas6:49

Bach's English Suite, number two, in A minor. I love the Bach English Suites, and really what I'd like to take to the Desert Island is a complete collection of them. But I chose number two because the first movement of it, the prelude, is something that I never tire of hearing, and it's something I used to hear my sister play when I was very, very little.

Presenter8:05

Ivo Pogarellich playing part of the prelude to Bach's English suite number two in A minor.

Presenter8:11

You went, Peter Jonas, to Sussex University to read English, which seems rather perverse, really, considering you were so dedicated to your music. What what happened?

Peter Jonas8:19

Well, it was against my will. My parents wouldn't allow me to read music or go anywhere to study music. My mother had an old fashioned idea, and probably a wise idea, that one needed to qualify in something serious first.

Presenter8:29

What did she want you to be?

Peter Jonas8:31

I think she would have liked it if I had gone into either a profession, law, or teaching, or preferably business, and perhaps earned a good living.

Presenter8:40

Sussex, of course, um landed you close to Glinbourne, where you got walk-on parts one summer. What what did you carry a spear in, do you remember?

Peter Jonas8:47

The very first thing I did was to um appear in Boheme, but I also carried a spear in the Lomindo when I was Captain of the Guard, and Anna Boleno when I was Captain of the Guard, and of course in Don Giovanni, where I was, so to speak, a piece of scenery, a stage hand, moving around a piece of scenery.

Presenter9:00

Didn't you appear on Broadway once?

Peter Jonas9:03

That was much later in New York uh in production of Westside Story where I was a a jet.

Presenter9:09

I just

Peter Jonas9:10

A a jet with a knife and with long sideburns and slick back hair and a packet of Marlborough rolled up in my T-shirt.

Presenter9:16

You've also, of course, um more recently appeared on stage at the Coliseum, haven't you, to ask for money?

Peter Jonas9:21

In order to cope with and perhaps raise the consciousness of the public in our fundraising effort, I decided when I first came to the Coliseum that one needed to actually go out in front of the curtain and make the audience part of one's fundraising and development target.

Presenter9:34

It was quite cheeky, really.

Peter Jonas9:36

It is a bit cheeky, and it's probably the American influence in my career, but it has a different

Presenter9:40

They'd never do it they'd never do it at the Royal Opera House, would they?

Peter Jonas9:43

Who knows?

Presenter9:45

There's a certain shamelessness about that approach though, isn't there? I mean, you I I s I sensed that in your life. You uh going back to the chronology of it, you were fairly shameless in the way you pursued uh what you wanted, uh writing to the Coliseum and saying, Look, I want to come and work for you.

Peter Jonas10:00

It may seem like that in retrospect and when you see it all laid out uh as a kind of history of somebody's career on a piece of paper, but in fact it's not. It's a very hard life in the theatrical or musical profession. The difficulty is getting on if you don't know anybody, and uh you just simply have to pester and continue and to be very firm about your ambitions and follow them very, very rigidly.

Presenter10:20

So what happened then in nineteen seventy four when when you uh actually wrote in and and pestered the ENO?

Peter Jonas10:26

I got a letter of rejection. Amusingly enough, it came from the person who was then Lord Harwood's personal assistant, Jeremy Colton, who is now the Director of Opera Planning and Casting at the Coliseum.

Peter Jonas10:37

And I do remember when I arri finally arrived as the director of the Coliseum after having been appointed many years later, they presented me my first birthday in the company. They presented me with a copy of the letter of rejection signed by Jeremy, who was now working in the senior management team there. So that was rather moving.

Presenter10:54

It would make a jolly good plot for an opera, actually, wouldn't it? There's a certain fatefulness about it.

Peter Jonas10:59

Yes, the force of destiny.

Presenter11:00

Shall we have your third record then?

Peter Jonas11:03

My next selection is something that is perhaps one of the closest pieces of music to my heart, and to a kind of sadness, I think, that is in all people connected with the performing arts. It's Verde's Four Sacred Pieces.

Peter Jonas11:18

and I've chosen particularly the tardeum from these four pieces.

Peter Jonas11:22

It's a work of resignation, it's a work of belief, of

Peter Jonas11:27

passion, religion, and a work really that respects death and it's something that I would couldn't miss having on the desert island with me.

Presenter12:35

Part of Verde's Te Deum, one of his four sacred pieces, with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.

Peter Jonas12:43

I'm so fond of that piece. I I it always makes me cry and practically did just then and I hope

Peter Jonas12:50

The listeners have put down their teacups and listened to it because I think there could be very few dry eyes left in them.

Peter Jonas12:56

among the public who are listening today.

Presenter12:59

The other thing I notice about your music is is that in all of the eight records here on the list there's there's no Mozart. Now, that's quite surprising. Why is that?

Peter Jonas13:07

Yes, Mozart is probably my greatest love as a composer. And I'm so familiar with so many of his works, and I suppose if I was to include any piece it would be the Mozart's string quintet in G minor. But I know it so well that I felt if I'm really marooned on this desert island I'll always have it in my head, so I've decided not to include any Mozart and to take it with me, locked up in Rottenham.

Presenter13:27

A lot of humming and whistling out there.

Peter Jonas13:29

Excellent.

Presenter13:30

Let's go back to your life, because uh we left you in nineteen seventy four, aged twenty eight, turned away by the ENO, turned away by the BBC, I think, and with you turning to teaching in Croydon.

Presenter13:41

Must have um felt it was all pretty hopeless, this musical ambition of yours.

Peter Jonas13:44

It was pretty hopeless. But one person did step into the breach. John Tooley agreed to see me, and actually gave me two interviews.

Presenter13:51

He was in charge of Covent Garb.

Peter Jonas13:52

He was in charge of Covent Garden.

Peter Jonas13:55

He gave me advice, but also thought that perhaps I might be the kind of material that the Royal Opera House was looking for. But at that time they were in the middle of budget cuts even then, and I couldn't be engaged. One day he rang me up to say an opportunity had presented itself, but not at Coffee.

Peter Jonas14:12

Sir George Schulte, who had been the music director of Covent Garden and was now at that time the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, his personal and administrative assistant in Chicago was ill.

Peter Jonas14:24

And they needed somebody to take her place for three months.

Peter Jonas14:27

And uh I had a series of interviews and they asked me to do it without any experience, but uh I went off to Chicago and did it and stayed.

Presenter14:34

You went for three months and you stayed for what, eleven years?

Peter Jonas14:37

Eleven years.

Presenter14:38

Working closely with George Shalte, what other great musical names did you work alongside?

Peter Jonas14:42

I worked closely with all of them really, and we had a golden period at that time. Scholti was the music director, but we had principal guest conductors, first of all Giulini, who conducted the excerpt of Four Sacred Pieces, and then later Claudio Bardo, but also Daniel Barenboim. We were very close colleagues, uh Raphael Kubelik, Elik Leinsdorf, Eugenie Normandy, Carlos Cliver.

Presenter15:04

Obviously invaluable experience. You mentioned earlier on that

Presenter15:08

The American experience had influenced you in all sorts of ways, made you perhaps more overt about fundraising. Did it teach you a degree of ruthlessness, do you think?

Peter Jonas15:17

No, I think what I learnt there was a tremendous amount about business and about entrepreneurial spirit. And the reason for that was not because it was all happening in Chicago in the mid-70s, it was because perhaps ten years prior to how it happened here, there was a great expansion in how the arts were marketed, what kind of attitude an artistic organization had to present itself to the public and sell its wares to the public. This was all starting at that point, and I was in at the start. Next record.

Peter Jonas15:47

The next record is lighter of heart. It's something that reflects a lot of my time in Chicago, and I grew in that time very fond of blues. It's B. B. King singing a rather happy number, Better Not Look Down, and it has kind of message to it, because it's a really optimistic text. He really just advises somebody, when the going gets tough, not to look down and put one's hands firmly on the joystick and carry on.

Speaker 316:14

If you wanna keep on firing

Speaker 316:23

Or you might just want some problem You can keep it

Presenter16:32

B. B. King singing Better Not Look Down

Presenter16:35

Before we go on to talk about your five years at the ENO Peter Jonas, I'd just like to talk at an even more personal level for a moment, if we may, because it was, I think, a few years after going to Chicago that you discovered that you had a form of cancer.

Presenter16:49

What happened?

Peter Jonas16:49

I was perfectly healthy at the time, so I thought, and I was suddenly diagnosed in a routine medical check up as having Hodgkins' disease of a fairly advanced nature.

Peter Jonas16:58

And uh it was a shattering blow, I suppose.

Peter Jonas17:02

I was then sent back to England to the Royal Marsden Hospital here in Sutton and in Fulham Road. And I must say I had treatment there, and I still go back there for check ups, and it's a place which

Peter Jonas17:14

I've grown extremely fond of, if that's a very odd word to use in this context.

Presenter17:16

But

Presenter17:18

How long did it all take out of your life this?

Peter Jonas17:20

It all took in a of a very serious nature, about three or four years, but um luckily it was only I was only one well, maybe half a year away from work.

Peter Jonas17:28

It was very difficult, and I think if I had to do it again, and if I knew what I know, I would be much more of a coward, and I wouldn't go through with it. But I didn't know, and each day one took as it came, and uh one went through operations, one went through chemotherapy, one went through radiation, one found new friends, one found new colleagues in illness, and one got close to several lines at various points that showed one that

Peter Jonas17:54

Life is a gift.

Peter Jonas17:56

and each day and each hour and each minute one has.

Peter Jonas18:00

one should value.

Presenter18:03

And physically did it change you at all?

Peter Jonas18:05

Yes, a great deal. I became much thinner, and uh I don't think I've ever put back the kind of weight that I had before I got sick.

Presenter18:14

But you're completely cured now.

Peter Jonas18:15

Yes, completely, I think. I hope.

Presenter18:18

And they kept your job open for you in Chicago, as you said, and not only that, they promoted you, I think, when you went back.

Peter Jonas18:24

I will always be grateful to two mentors there, George Tralty and John Edwards, who was the vice president of the orchestra. They were incredible. They came to my bedside and actually said, you know, never worry, you have a home here. And I was very grateful to them. They actually promoted me as well, b even before they had a real guarantee that I was a going concern for the future.

Presenter18:45

But then some years later it was, um I think what about nineteen eighty three, eighty four, that you heard that George Harwood, Lord Harwood, was retiring as head of the ENO and there was that job you wanted.

Peter Jonas18:56

I remember seeing it in a in an airmail edition of the Financial Times, which I got in in Chicago, that George Harwood was retiring. And um but I did think

Peter Jonas19:04

What a wonderful opportunity for somebody

Presenter19:06

Did you really think a wonderful job for somebody? Didn't you think there it is? I always knew it would come my way.

Peter Jonas19:10

At first I didn't at all. I had no intention of leaving America. I felt thoroughly involved and immersed in the American artistic system, if you like.

Presenter19:19

But you applied for it and you got it. What sort of financial position was the ENO in when you took over?

Peter Jonas19:25

Very, very difficult one. Um I didn't really realize quite how difficult until I had actually arrived in May of nineteen eighty five and two months later

Peter Jonas19:34

Um the Arts Council really put the threat of extinction over our heads because we had a three quarters of a million deficit of

Peter Jonas19:40

For one reason or another.

Presenter19:41

So you set about at that time, I think, after taking up the job that you cut down employees, you f leaned the whole thing down, didn't you?

Peter Jonas19:48

Yes, we leaned the whole thing down, but we also increased our income gen generation. We also took a total of, for example, private sector fundraising in eighty three, eighty four of three hundred thousand up to what will be next year, a total of one point seven million.

Peter Jonas20:03

So we

Peter Jonas20:05

had to accept a challenge really that was thrown at us by the government and the Arts Council and in accepting it we tried to do it as as enthusiastically as possible.

Presenter20:15

Shall we have your next piece of music?

Peter Jonas20:17

The next piece of music is

Peter Jonas20:19

Sung by a friend of mine, a friend of mine who died of cancer last year.

Peter Jonas20:24

Um

Peter Jonas20:25

Jan Di Gaetane was a great American mezzo soprano.

Peter Jonas20:29

who taught me when I was on a fellowship here at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. She made it a recording of Charles Ives' songs with Gilbert Callish on the piano.

Peter Jonas20:39

And they brought these songs to the attention of many when they had been ignored for so long. The song that I have chosen is Memories, which is in two halves, happy and sad, and I think you can only have a little bit of the happy one.

Speaker 420:52

Standing in the opera huss, the opera huss, the opera huss are waiting for the curtain to arise if I just

Speaker 321:18

From the street astray on my earth.

Speaker 321:29

What two less thread bearers that old red shore

Speaker 321:41

It is tattered, it is torn.

Speaker 321:46

It shows

Presenter21:52

Jandi Gaetani singing Charles Ives's Memories.

Presenter21:56

Let's talk, Peter Jonas, about policy at the ENO, because this September you're you're planning to stage, I think, Mozart apart, only twentieth century opera. No Rossini, no Verdi, no Wagner. Um isn't that tantamount to professional suicide?

Peter Jonas22:12

No.

Peter Jonas22:13

Um

Peter Jonas22:14

I think it's very important for us to have a respect for our century, all aspects of it.

Peter Jonas22:19

The art of our century is much more widely and fondly acknowledged in the areas of painting and architecture even than it is in music. People are much more nervous of contemporary music than they are of contemporary art.

Presenter22:31

You say that people, the public, are are nervous of it. I mean, they're not just nervous, are they? They're notoriously suspicious, I think, of modern music. Isn't there a great danger that they'll vote with their feet?

Peter Jonas22:41

I don't think there is. Um we're going to be very careful about how we market it. There is a theme behind it and a reason behind it. The season is the nineteen ninety-one season. We're drawing to a close of this century. It's really a chance to have a major retrospective of ninety years. And I think your remarks might not have been so questioning if we had had a major retrospective of ninety years in nineteen sixty or nineteen seventy, because we'd have covered an equal balance and you would have had quite a few major works from the 1890s. It's just rather startling to suddenly feel we're coming to the end of a hundred years.

Presenter23:14

Boom.

Presenter23:14

It's just that it does seem like something of a contradiction, because after all, the ENO has made its its reputation by making opera more accessible, not least by singing it in English, but also by putting on lively new productions of the classics, like Jonathan Miller's Rigoletto or Nicholas Haydner's magic flute. I mean, isn't it more important to do that?

Peter Jonas23:34

It's important to do both. It's m mostly important, I think, for an opera house to continue to live.

Peter Jonas23:40

It can only continue to live if there's a constant stream of new works.

Presenter23:43

So how are the bookings for the Twentieth Century retrospective?

Peter Jonas23:46

Well, the subscription booking has just started, and I'm happy to say it's up.

Presenter23:51

Record number six.

Peter Jonas23:52

The sixth record

Peter Jonas23:54

is an operatic one.

Peter Jonas23:56

Die Meistersinger by Wagner.

Peter Jonas23:58

And we've talked a lot today about tensions of first nights and tensions of the job and tensions of one's private life.

Peter Jonas24:06

I think when I go into the theatre for a performance of Master Singers, I go in and I sit in my seat.

Peter Jonas24:12

and the overture starts, and I suddenly feel at peace and at home.

Peter Jonas24:17

It's an opera in whose world I can lose myself for five hours completely.

Speaker 324:26

Holy Spirit.

Speaker 324:30

Please stop.

Presenter25:25

The opening of Wagner's Demeistersinger with Rene Collo and the orchestra and chorus of the Dresden State Opera House conducted by Herbert von Carrian.

Presenter25:33

You're patiently a workaholic, Peter, although um you remarried at the end of last year. Has that altered your regime at all?

Peter Jonas25:40

It has.

Peter Jonas25:41

I'm still as serious about work, but my marriage last year has been a source of real joy, as it should be in the first year. And uh of course it's a marriage that is forever and it's um something that means a lot to me and my wife is who is in the business as an agent has taught me a lot about harnessing the discipline and making a few private compartments.

Presenter26:01

So how do you relax? How do you unwind? What do you do?

Peter Jonas26:05

I do relax much more than people think. Uh I am a great movie addict a buff, if you like. I try to see every new movie that comes on of any quality in this town. And uh I also try to keep up a rate of seeing movies of two to three a week, but I'm finding that difficult now.

Peter Jonas26:21

I take exercise quite seriously, and that's a recent development. It's really on health grounds, and I go to a Pilates class, which is a cross between calinetics, I suppose, and Alexander, and a little bit of ballet thrown in. It's a class that o often dancers do when they're injured.

Presenter26:36

And you also, I think, make intricate architectural models, is that right?

Peter Jonas26:41

A passion for contemporary architecture, 20th century architecture, grew while I was in Chicago, which is of course the mecca for that. And I really do enjoy indulging in the rather mindless task of building some of the buildings that I love, such as the Lloyds Building, which I completed last year. I'd love to start on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, but as the Lloyds Building took me a year...

Speaker 327:02

This is making them out of what?

Peter Jonas27:03

Just making them out of what? Making them out of paper models and plans that you can buy from a maker in Holland. They're very intricate and they take about a year to do.

Presenter27:12

And beyond all of that, you eat an awful lot of chocolate. I I read all this and you are meticulously, not to say painfully tidy.

Peter Jonas27:21

That's, too, being eroded by marriage.

Presenter27:24

But all of these things mean that life is going to be very tough on the desert island. I mean, there'll be no chocolate, no paper to make these these models, no company. I mean, is there any part of it, the musical part, that you're actually looking forward to?

Peter Jonas27:39

No.

Presenter27:40

I didn't think there would be.

Presenter27:43

Let's have record number seven.

Peter Jonas27:46

I am a great fan of violin music.

Peter Jonas27:48

And I suppose if there is one practical musician I worship, it's Jascha Heifitz. I've tried to collect all his records, and I've chosen a record off the Mendelssohn trio, which he made in nineteen fifty, with Arto Rubinstein and Grigor Pertogowski. It's something that I'm.

Peter Jonas28:06

believe I would play again and again and again on a desert island and never tire of.

Presenter29:11

Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifitz, and Gregor Piatogowski playing part of the second movement of Mendelssohn's trio opus forty nine in D minor.

Presenter29:21

Your life on on paper at least, Peter, seems to turn in in ten year cycles, which um which gives you, what, another four or so at the ENO, teaching the nation to appreciate the music of this century. What then? Have you developed another ambition since you've realized your first one?

Peter Jonas29:36

I'm very scared of what then. I I feel the year and O came much too early in my life. I feel at forty three, maybe with four years, maybe with five, maybe with three, who knows whether I'll survive.

Peter Jonas29:48

I feel a great sense of worry about what I'll ever do with my life in the future. And uh people say, No, shut up, don't worry, but um one always does.

Peter Jonas29:57

I can't think of another job in opera that I would want. It's.

Peter Jonas30:02

The best one.

Presenter30:04

Well now before we hear your last record I I want to discuss your chosen luxury because I've had some advance warning of it and it's it's not only complicated but

Presenter30:12

Really rather worrying. Would you care to describe what it is?

Peter Jonas30:15

I take it. I've been advised that my wife is disqualified, so I can't take her with me.

Presenter30:19

Uh

Speaker 430:19

Mm-hmm.

Peter Jonas30:20

So I will be completely alone, and it may just get too much.

Peter Jonas30:24

Uh the sun may be too hot and there may be no shelter. So I think what I've chosen combines a few things that are very dear to me with some things that I don't know at all, but I think might make life pleasant. I think it would be a very large joint of marijuana with a cyanide capsule at the end of it, so that I my end would be peaceful, and perhaps all of this could be rolled up in a chocolate champagne truffle, maybe from Teutscher in Zurich. And this chocolate truffle joint, cyanide capsule, would be kept in a very efficient Westinghouse fridge with an with an unlimited electrical supply. And that's basically a kind of fallback for that dreadful moment when I'm burnt to a crisp, I'm starving, the music can play no more, and

Peter Jonas31:09

The end might have to be in sight.

Presenter31:11

But who are you trying to fool in wrapping it all up like that in this joke?

Peter Jonas31:14

I'm just trying to make it more pleasurable.

Presenter31:17

Well, I can't d deny you pleasure from your luxury, certainly not. That's that's in the rules. And I I'm I'm blowed really if I can deny you death, because after all one could um it's hardly of practical value, so I think you'd better have it. Um, marijuana and all.

Peter Jonas31:31

Well, I don't know whether it'll be enjoyable, but maybe it will.

Presenter31:35

Record number eight, your last one.

Peter Jonas31:38

The last record is a symphony by Mahler, the third symphony, and I've chosen the beginning of the last movement. It's played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Klaus Tenstedt is conducting. I worked with him a lot in Chicago, a marvellous man, a man who I felt very related to because he had to overcome a struggle against a very virulent form of cancer and was an example to me before and after my illness. Whenever I see him, which is not very often, I've seen his wife perhaps a little bit more often lately.

Peter Jonas32:07

I am reminded of his courage, his example to everybody in the music profession, a really dedicated musician of integrity, and one with great heart, soul, and real emotional strength.

Presenter33:27

The beginning of the final movement of Mahler's Symphony No. three in D minor, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Klaus Tenstedtt. You have to choose one now, Peter, of the eight that is more special to you than any of the others.

Peter Jonas33:40

I suppose it must be Meistersinger, perhaps the greatest opera ever written, certainly the piece I can lose myself in, and above all, very, very long, so good value on the desert island. It will have to be Maistersinger's.

Presenter33:52

And what about a book?

Peter Jonas33:53

I think the work I must take is um Saint Augustine's City of God.

Peter Jonas33:58

Which is a very long treatise.

Peter Jonas34:02

on philosophy and really

Peter Jonas34:04

A work that incorporates the Platonic.

Peter Jonas34:07

The View of Life into Christianity.

Peter Jonas34:09

It was inspired by um the sacking of Rome, I think, in the fourth century.

Peter Jonas34:14

And uh it really poses a lot of questions which are very much questions we pose to ourselves today. If the sacking of Rome, or if the sacking of the world, if you like, if death can happen, if unpleasantness can happen, if wars can happen, what is really the meaning of our existence here? And it poses these questions and analyses them in the overall scheme.

Peter Jonas34:34

That God or a power beyond life really has some kind of structure, some kind of answer.

Presenter34:41

That, alongside the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, should keep you quite busy, hum?

Peter Jonas34:45

I think it will.

Presenter34:47

Peter Jonas, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 434:58

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.