Ronald Eyre

Speaker 10:00

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 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 10:12

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a man of many parts. His main body of work has been in the theatre, where he's directed dozens of outstanding productions. But he's also written plays, made television documentaries, and appeared as a presenter and interviewer.

Presenter0:43

He actually began his professional life as a schoolmaster, having obeyed his parents' wishes to improve himself by leaving his Yorkshire coal mining home to study English at Oxford. Today his versatility suggests a man who still enjoys self discovery, if not improvement. That, perhaps, he leaves for his audience. He is Ronald Eyre. It is, Ron, your your versatility that strikes one about your career. I mean, directing, producing, presenting, comedy, tragedy, opera. Did you plan it that way, or are you just a man who can't say no?

Ronald Eyre1:16

Maybe it's a man who can't sit stand in one place. I mean, you could look at it as backing endlessly from one thing into another. So you find that you were doing one thing, your horror at it propels you backwards into something else. So there is a a negative side to it. I like to think of myself as the ultimate freelance and the resident outsider to anything that anybody's trying to institutionalise, but I think it has positive and negative.

Presenter1:39

But part of the the freelance mentality is of course that you're you're worried nobody'll ask you if you keep saying no, so you keep saying yes.

Ronald Eyre1:46

I'm not sure about that. I think the worst advice I got when I became a freelance, having been in the BBC, was that I must accept every job. I think the opposite is the case. You must only accept those jobs that light you up and that you think you can really make something of, because it's on that that you'll get your next job. So I think if you're going to start clutching at everything that comes along, then I think you better stay in whatever's looking after you originally.

Presenter2:09

Well, now the desert island. Are you suited to the solitary existence, do you think?

Ronald Eyre2:15

Well, I live on a famous desert island called Nottinghill Gage, I suppose, and people paddle in and paddle out. Uh and I don't mind being alone. In fact, uh sometimes I think that my idea of bliss is to have been invited to, you know, three or four nice parties or dinners and to have said no to all of them and to be at home reading a book.

Ronald Eyre2:34

That is a form of bliss. How long I could take it, I wouldn't quite know.

Presenter2:38

But if they didn't invite you.

Ronald Eyre2:40

Oh, desperate. You know, you must be invited before you say no. Otherwise you're touting for trade.

Presenter2:46

Let me invite you to put your first record on the grammophone. What is it?

Ronald Eyre2:50

Well, I have a feeling that nearly all records uh are calculated to make you feel inferior. You say to yourself, um I'll never sing as well as that, or I'll never play as well as that. I wanted something which would make me think that with a bit of practice, indeed in this case a lot of practice, with no instruments, I could perhaps come up with something that was not too distant from this, and it's lilting or mouth music, Pat Kilduff singing The Hunter's Perth.

Speaker 43:16

Tay and the day the lady at the dummy table did a little letter did the delight, and the little little the lady and your dummy little lady the delighting of it the tail day the little day you little did little the delivery the day at a little and a little little the daily day to it lay the little day to eat lay did the delight of it the delivery at the lady the lady did a little

Presenter4:06

Pat killed off with the chieftains and the hunters' purse. Well, you could do that, Ron.

Ronald Eyre4:10

Well, after a bit of practice, I actually hearing it, I thought I might go mad, I might drive myself mad doing it.

Presenter4:16

Tell me about Ronaire, the only child whose parents wanted so much for him.

Ronald Eyre4:22

I think they showed enormous imagination. Where they got it from, I just can't think. Those are the days, of course, before a lot of transport and a lot of education, when a whole range of brain and imagination stayed in one place. It wasn't scooped off and sent off to universities. So I think of my parents as extremely imaginative and gifted and clever and entirely unschooled.

Presenter4:43

Because they always intended that you should go to university.

Ronald Eyre4:46

This is

Ronald Eyre4:47

that I was going to. My father's when I was quite small. I remember sitting in a field near the sounds like some Alan Bennett sketch, doesn't it? Sitting in a field near the top of the coal mine, you know, and my father saying, You're going to go to Cambridge. Now, who told him about Cambridge? I can't imagine. He must have read it somewhere.

Presenter5:03

He was a co-miner, was he?

Ronald Eyre5:04

See he was a coal miner, yeah.

Presenter5:05

And this was where.

Ronald Eyre5:06

This was near Barnsley, in Yorkshire, a village called Mapplewell.

Presenter5:10

And and your mother, did she work?

Ronald Eyre5:12

Uh my mother didn't work dear when after I was born, but she had worked in a shop and uh she she was pro she probably, as a brain, was perhaps brighter than my father, but maybe a touch more earthbound.

Presenter5:25

It sounds, though, as if they were yes, imaginative, but perhaps pushy.

Ronald Eyre5:29

Oh.

Presenter5:29

Oh, not a bit of it.

Ronald Eyre5:30

Yeah.

Ronald Eyre5:31

I don't think they were bushy at all. I just think that they had natural taste. They thought that life was sweeter if they had a flower in the garden, or if they, in a room which had no other furniture, bought a piano as the first thing they bought and got me to play it. It wasn't sort of to show off to the neighbours. It was just a sort of feeling for sweetness in a rather bitter landscape.

Presenter5:55

Were you any good at the piano?

Ronald Eyre5:57

Not concert pitch, but uh I mean I certainly enjoyed it and practised quite hard. And uh I thought I amuse myself very much, though I never like playing uh in front of other people, but I would consent sometimes to leaving the door open between myself and somebody else.

Presenter6:12

Do you still play?

Ronald Eyre6:13

Uh the piano's there, standing reproach, piled up with books.

Presenter6:17

What about the rest of this village of Mapplewell? Um did they know, were they aware of your parents' ambitions for you? Did they know that the young Ronair was going to make something of himself?

Ronald Eyre6:26

Not at all. I think we were quite reclusive really. I think we were even a bit eccentric. I I think we were overlooked. Um the stone that the builders rejected, I like to think. Uh no, we s I mean you see the arist the aristocracy in a village like that would be the top Methodists, the odd solicitor, the schoolteachers. We didn't belong to them. We just

Presenter6:45

Weren't you good Methodists?

Ronald Eyre6:46

We were, but we were at bottom of the chapel, not the top of the chapel. You know, it was a balcony where the right people who are nearer heaven are going to go.

Presenter6:53

But surely in a village like that everybody knows everything about everybody else.

Ronald Eyre6:57

I think less so. I got a feeling there was an enormous amount of secrecy went on. I mean, I think there's a whole three volume novel to be written on the sort of web of intrigue and emotion that went on underneath that fairly placid surface.

Presenter7:09

I thought they posted it all up on the notice board every time anything happened.

Ronald Eyre7:12

Oh, well, they certainly posted up who was ill. Um I you know, I did my obligation as a child and got diphtheria, everybody did. And um there was a notice at the at the crossroads at the near the bus stop at the centre of the village and uh

Ronald Eyre7:27

One day the teacher of my class noticed my father running very hard down the road looking extremely gleeful, and that was when I was in hospital, and she stopped him and said, What's the matter? And he said, Oh, well, I've just seen the notice board, and having said that he was dangerously ill, it now says he's seriously ill. So that was a big improvement.

Presenter7:47

Shall we have your second record?

Ronald Eyre7:49

Yes, um, in tribute to the piano, though not in any way that I would ever play it, I would like to hear some really skilled pianism, and I would like to hear some of Prokofiev playing his own piano concerto, number three in C major.

Presenter9:01

Sergei Prokofiev playing part of his piano concerto No. Three in C major with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Piero Coppola.

Presenter9:10

What about the theatre and drama in Mapplewell in the thirties, Ronaire? Did did that impinge on its life at all?

Ronald Eyre9:16

Theatre Life of Mapplewell.

Presenter9:19

Yeah.

Ronald Eyre9:19

Pretty depleted, I can tell you.

Presenter9:19

Ready

Presenter9:21

But in the village hall itself, presumably something must have happened sometime.

Ronald Eyre9:25

Uh yes, I tried to make something happen. I remember doing an extremely distinguished production of um a thing called The Dumb Wife of Cheapside. The stage I didn't do anything about this had a large pillar, a supporting pillar of the roof, smacked downstage centre. Well, later on in life I would have understood that lots of actors want to stand there, but this was fine by me. It didn't really matter since I'd worked the whole production out like a standard plan before me, and I think I scarcely ever looked at the stage, I just pointed remotely and gazed at my notes.

Presenter9:53

But you were the you were directing.

Ronald Eyre9:55

I was directing at about the age of fourteen, I would think.

Presenter9:57

So you were a very bossy director, weren't you?

Ronald Eyre9:59

Oh, no, no, no, deeply sympathetic, but got enraged when they didn't turn up to rehearse. They didn't take it as seriously as I did.

Presenter10:06

So y you you couldn't be doing with any sloppiness?

Ronald Eyre10:06

Seven

Ronald Eyre10:09

I was extremely obsessional and probably obnoxious and a pain in the neck.

Presenter10:14

I was going to say, are you still like that today? But not those last things.

Ronald Eyre10:17

It's been transmuted into different sorts of pens and necks.

Presenter10:20

Yeah.

Presenter10:22

What sort of director do how would you describe yourself to day?

Ronald Eyre10:26

I think what I do I think I'm a good listener. I like listening. And I think I can also listen, I think, sometimes to the things people aren't saying. So in a rehearsal room I can maybe tune into this secret station the secret woes of somebody trying to tackle a part and help them to be less scared of it.

Presenter10:45

But say if their interpretation of the character simply isn't right, in your view.

Ronald Eyre10:49

Well, it's got not to be right for a reason. If there's somebody who congenitally can't see a thing along lines which we might both agree will be good, then I've obviously cast the wrong actor.

Presenter11:01

You've worked with Ale Alec Guinness a lot, of course. I mean, what?

Ronald Eyre11:04

He's not the wrong actor.

Presenter11:06

What sort of problems do you have with him, or is it all a joy?

Ronald Eyre11:09

This is a tight corner. No, he's an extremely exacting man. He's extremely intelligent. He has firm ideas about what he would like to see happening on the stage in terms of design or his own performance and other people's performances. But that's bracing. I mean, nobody wants a doormat to work with. And if somebody stands up and fights on behalf of the part or the meaning, that increases your muscle and does well for the play.

Presenter11:36

Let's have your third record.

Ronald Eyre11:38

I was intending not to have any Mozart, because it's his great anniversary and everybody's having Mozart, but I couldn't keep him out.

Ronald Eyre11:44

Uh I would like to have a piece of an opera. I'd like it to be an ensemble from an opera and the opera I would choose would be Magic Flute because it moves me in a very particular way about childhood and magic and journeys and thinking you know something and discovering that you don't. Um I would like uh a trio between

Ronald Eyre12:04

Pamina, Tamina, and Zarascro, especially since Pamina is sung by one of my very favourite singers, Jamgad Zeyfried.

Speaker 412:31

I'll be in here.

Speaker 412:39

Find a triumph.

Speaker 413:07

Yeah.

Presenter13:11

Hmgard Seyfried, Anton de Motte, and Ludwig Weber singing the trio Zollisch dicht Teure from Mozart's Magic Flute, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter13:21

So you shone Ron at English at the Queen Elizabeth School, Wakefield, and then you went off to do natural learning.

Ronald Eyre13:27

I learnt English.

Presenter13:28

You learnt?

Ronald Eyre13:28

Because you see, I came with this other accent. I mean, Mapplewell spoke a special sort of English. And then starting in my early teens, I started learning this thing called Standard English.

Presenter13:37

Then, off to national service, I must say Ronair, the wireless mechanic, doesn't have a happy ring to it. That was terrible.

Ronald Eyre13:44

I was an air wireless mechanic and uh I used to do jobs on planes, I used to have to change radios and I just hated every minute of it, I really did.

Presenter13:52

Uh

Presenter13:52

Then on to to Oxford, not to Cambridge. Your your parents must have been bursting with pride at this stage.

Ronald Eyre13:59

They were fine, yes, they they came and visited me there. It was really it was Martian, the whole experience. I mean, I I loved Oxford very much and found it a kindly place. Uh but thinking about it now, it was like uprooting somebody, a plant totally, and, you know, planting something that's used to some bosky meadow and putting it in oh, a desert or an Alp, or something quite different.

Presenter14:18

Because

Presenter14:20

And what about when your parents came?

Ronald Eyre14:22

Well, that was very difficult, and I have s the odd memory that I'm not too proud of when I looked at them and thought, You don't really fit here. In fact, on one awful occasion, I probably shouldn't say this my mother got off a train from Sheffield, and my first remark to her was, Did you have to wear that dress?

Presenter14:40

It's painful, huh?

Ronald Eyre14:40

painful. But by confessing it in public I hope that the guilt of it will be taken away.

Presenter14:44

Yeah.

Presenter14:45

Di did they live to see you achieve greater things? I mean, what did they

Ronald Eyre14:50

My father never believed they they were greater. He when I went into the theatre, he used to take friends aside and say, Is he doing all right? Uh if I'd stayed in a steady job with a wage, he would of course he could have assessed it himself, but he thought that I was going off on some tangent he couldn't remotely follow.

Presenter15:06

So was that one of the reasons when you left Oxford you became a school teacher that you you really felt the pressure to have a proper job?

Ronald Eyre15:12

Not really. I think natural timidity, uh foot looseness, dawdling. I mean a natural dawdler. I didn't have that sort of feeling that there's limited time and you must get to your destination. Uh I've always been

Ronald Eyre15:24

functioned as if I believed that the next step forward was probably sideways. And uh I thought to teach was congenial for those years, for four years. I wouldn't have liked to do it much more because I did it as a sort of non-stop cabaret act and I needed eventually, I think, if I'd been wanting to teach, to get down and do it properly.

Presenter15:43

Let's pause for another record.

Ronald Eyre15:46

I had the privilege of doing a lot of travelling during the seventies, subsidized by the BBC as a matter of fact, and one of the most enjoyable and heartbreaking trips was to Romania. And the surprising thing there was the packed churches and the quality of the religious life. As far as one could see it, the Ceausescu was still in power.

Ronald Eyre16:09

I would like some music, some orthodox music, whether it be Russian, Bulgarian or Romanian.

Speaker 416:16

Vol spots are leisure.

Speaker 416:36

Yeah.

Speaker 416:52

Oberich is a gross sport seal.

Presenter17:16

Part of the great Vespers sung by the Russian Orthodox Cathedral Choir of Paris.

Presenter17:21

Subsidized travel, courtesy of the BBC you mentioned there. That of course was to make your television series The Long Search about the religions of the world, which is highly acclaimed. And you talked to Muslims, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists for best part of three years, I think, an all absorbing project.

Ronald Eyre17:37

Yes, absolutely. It could have gone on. I only regretted when we got to the end that somebody didn't say night. Okay, that was a crime a sort of rehearsal. Now we'll do it properly.

Presenter17:45

But how did it change you? I mean, it must have affected the way in which you viewed the world and and your place in it.

Ronald Eyre17:51

The main thing was that I felt more animated and interested at the end of it than I had at the start, maybe because various fears had subsided, because I was fairly scared at the beginning. I found it endlessly fascinating. I got a great deal from every tradition, particularly I suppose from things which were absolutely opposite to the ones in which I'd been brought up. So I was very thirsty for the opposite to my background.

Presenter18:13

So what do you answer now when people ask you that that question? What church are you?

Ronald Eyre18:16

What church are you?

Presenter18:19

Impossible to answer.

Ronald Eyre18:19

Yes, you can't really. I d I don't think it helps anybody to uh give a give a label. I mean, in the sense that I am if you you ask me if I'm Yorkshire, yes I am. In exactly the same way I'm Christian and Methodist, because that's the way I've been brought up. And people can point out in me stuff which is absolutely Methodist, you know, which I now think I'm is second nature, it's in the bloodstream.

Presenter18:42

What kinds of things? Puritanical things? Well, sometimes

Ronald Eyre18:44

I mean, at least in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, um the main character does shed his burden at some point. I think a lot of Methodists go on kind of increasing it and dragging it along.

Presenter18:57

It's still loaded up there between the shoulder blades.

Ronald Eyre18:58

They're between the shoulder blades, isn't it?

Presenter19:01

You were really quite ill about twelve months ago, I know. Um did your faith help you then at all?

Ronald Eyre19:07

It was quite bleak, and one has got to face up to the possibility of one's extinction, and in a way, at that moment, you become somebody rather different, and that was not a fruitless experience.

Presenter19:20

What kind of different person do you become?

Ronald Eyre19:23

Well, I think you wonder why you waste so much time not enjoying yourself.

Presenter19:29

You see many more positive things than negative things.

Ronald Eyre19:32

Yeah.

Presenter19:32

You saw something else though, didn't you? I've heard you tell the story since, that you actually saw a vision on the edge of the city.

Ronald Eyre19:37

Oh, that was a little tale. I was ill indeed and in bed. Now, a few weeks before, a friend of mine had called, I wasn't in, and had left a photograph of his very young son, aged about two, and a Christmas card. And I put the child's picture up on my bookshelf. And somehow I looked at it, and it was very, very sweet. In the middle of the crisis of this illness, for some reason, I turned sweating and high temperature.

Ronald Eyre20:03

to my side, and there was this small creature sitting there, j and he just said, Hello

Ronald Eyre20:09

And I said hello.

Ronald Eyre20:11

And then I went to sleep, and slept for about eighteen hours.

Ronald Eyre20:14

And that was the end of a particular crisis. So it's like having an angel there.

Presenter20:19

Let's have your fifth record.

Ronald Eyre20:23

Uh this is a bit of a confession. Uh

Presenter20:25

There's a lot of those.

Ronald Eyre20:26

I well yes, I think we're into confessions. I wish you'd told me.

Ronald Eyre20:31

I switched television on about a year ago and it was um

Ronald Eyre20:37

It was this very, very good, folky sort of musician playing and I thought, Oh, he's awfully good. I'll wait to see who he is and then I'll tell all my friends and secretly, you know, we will be the people who

Ronald Eyre20:47

who appreciate this fella. Well, of course it was James Taylor, whom I'd never heard of and everybody else has known for 20 years. So I felt extremely chastened by discovering that I was just catching up with the last 20 years of reasonably pop music. And I took to buying his records and when I was working in the States last summer and had some long journeys in Arizona and Colorado, a lot of James Taylor was coming out over the car radio. And I'd like one number of his called Home by Another Way.

Speaker 421:15

Yes, it went home by another way, home by another way.

Speaker 421:21

Maybe me and you can be wise guys too and go home by another way.

Speaker 421:29

We can make it another way Save home as I used to say Keep a weather right to the tard on high and go home

Presenter21:41

Uh

Presenter21:43

James Taylor singing Home by Another Way. You must tell me briefly about your spell as an English master at Blackburn Grammar School, because you you taught the young Russell Harty, didn't you?

Ronald Eyre21:53

Yes, yes. I think I just started and he was just about to finish, so we were not too far. In fact, I think he probably thought he was teaching me lots of things, and was.

Presenter22:00

You never managed to cure him of saying you are, are you not?

Ronald Eyre22:03

Oh no, all that rotund acting he used to I think he used to love the way the headmaster walked in for prayers. I don't know whether he listened to the prayers, but he loved the gesture and it came out in his language too.

Presenter22:14

But the lure of of the theatre uh w was too great in the end and and off you went. You left Blackburn and uh went to London. First stop BBC Schools television, wasn't it?

Ronald Eyre22:23

Yes, that's right. There were four people who sort of started that and I was one of the two who came from outside the BBC. So that was a very exciting privilege time.

Presenter22:32

But they let you loose on some live drama, I think.

Ronald Eyre22:34

Yes, the I think the head of the department, a very enlightened woman, I've been very lucky in my women bosses. Um she thought it did the uh she thought it did schools television uh a lot of credit if I went away and made a mark or didn't make a splodge uh in other people's departments. So she used to send me out to do Saturday night plays and so on live on television.

Presenter22:55

Must have been ten

Ronald Eyre22:55

Maybe f

Presenter22:56

Bye.

Ronald Eyre22:56

Absolutely terrifying to see the roller caption, that's the credits and stuff, of the last program going up and then somebody standing holding a telephone at the side, in touch with some engineer who then said, okay, off you go. And I would have thought uh most people if that had gone on would have had a sort of life, a professional life of about five years, if that. But of course things have got much more stylish since then.

Presenter23:19

And then you started writing plays, and uh in those early years you wrote A Crack in the Ice, A Touch of Henry, The Single Passion, and you began to direct theatre, Shaw and Shakespeare and Allan Bennett, and at the National and at Stratford. Your career really just suddenly took off, really, didn't it?

Ronald Eyre23:29

Broke.

Ronald Eyre23:35

Yes, there was a period of about eighteen months when I couldn't do anything wrong. I don't know or maybe even slightly longer. I did it was just fine. It was like g moving very fast over stepping stones on a river and just happening not to hit a wrong one or a wobbly one. I've hit a good number of wobbly ones since. But at that time, yes, it was a bit charmed for a bit.

Presenter23:56

A delicious feeling while in

Ronald Eyre23:57

Yeah.

Presenter23:59

You must, though, judging by all the success you've had since, um, you must have been sounded out, surely, more than once, about becoming artistic director of one of the big companies I mean, the National or the RSC.

Ronald Eyre24:10

Yes, we had lots of those conversations. In fact, it it was quite depressing really when I had to face up to the fact that I was really some sort of Peter Pan who didn't ever want to come back from some never-never land of his own. Now I think, although probably I wouldn't be capable of it now, but I think, yes, I'm now in a fit state to be the shoulder on which people cry. I think at that stage I thought, no, no, my shoulder's not really for that.

Presenter24:32

Some more music.

Ronald Eyre24:33

Many connections into the next record. Othello is a play I directed at Stratford, so there is that connection.

Ronald Eyre24:40

It is Verdi's Otello is the first L P I ever acquired, and I would like to hear the great shared curse which Iago and Othello sing at the end of Verdi's second act.

Presenter25:51

Giuseppe Valdengo and Ramon Vinae singing the duet from Act Two of Verdi's Otello with the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Otturo Toscanini.

Presenter26:01

The the opera, or directing it, Ron Eyre, was another departure for you. It began about ten or eleven years ago, I think.

Ronald Eyre26:08

Yes, in the early eighties. Um I had been going to direct an opera at Glimborn before I went off and did the long search, but that was a a fork in the road and I took the documentary film fork. Uh but then came back and this offer to work at Buxton came up and it was a very, very happy experience and Murray Philip Langridge and a splendid company and we enjoyed ourselves extremely.

Presenter26:27

You did Beatrice and Benedict, I think.

Ronald Eyre26:28

Beatrice and Bennett, the Balios, yes.

Presenter26:30

And you were you were fifty by this point of this new departure and

Ronald Eyre26:32

Point of vision.

Ronald Eyre26:34

Not at heart.

Presenter26:35

Never at heart.

Ronald Eyre26:37

No.

Presenter26:37

No. Then you went on to to to do full staff later on, of course, in Los Angeles and Coffin Art.

Ronald Eyre26:40

Los Angeles and Columbia. And uh took me out of one uh lair of opera into another, maybe too rapidly. I mean, maybe one got the cramps.

Presenter26:51

But there must be enormous differences between directing theatre and directing opera. What are the biggest?

Ronald Eyre26:56

The conductor.

Ronald Eyre26:57

And the composer. I mean they

Presenter27:00

They're the bosses, really.

Ronald Eyre27:00

They're the bosses, yes. And again, quite rightly.

Presenter27:03

But it i I mean, do opera singers take any notice when you, the director, this secondary person to the conductor, take them on one side and say, I really don't think, you know, you had any motive for that walk?

Ronald Eyre27:14

I think one of the problems is that the psychology is often in the music.

Ronald Eyre27:19

So there's no point in having, you know, in deciding that this is a scratching himself character when the music is a preening music. So you have to face the quality of the music and you have to get the actor to presumably to follow something similar, unless you're totally perverse. There are singers who enjoy delving. I mean, think of Thomas Allen, to take just one. I mean, a magnificent singer who was also an extremely good actor and fearless in terms of exploring the part. Some others, and I wouldn't make a nationalistic remark, but there are people who think that if they can stand in a well-lit position and sing it, they are doing all they have to do.

Presenter27:56

And couldn't act if they wanted to.

Ronald Eyre27:57

You couldn't actually there may be being extremely modest by not trying.

Presenter28:01

But isn't that deeply frustrating in the end for you? Because you're you're just part of the machine, but not really in any leading role.

Ronald Eyre28:08

Yes, I think it can be very frustrating. I think one of the breakthroughs for me, working with that extremely high voltage cast that sang Falstaff in Los Angeles originally, was the discovery that most of the things that people were being difficult about were matters of terror. When you realize that some grumpy singer was sitting on a bench not wanting to move, not wanting to do what you wanted them to do, not wanting to wear that wig or that costume, it was a sort of code for saying, I'm not sure my voice is ever going to get round this music. And you discover that when you say go out for a meal with them somewhere, and I, as I did in the case of one person, and he looked up and he saw a vent, one of those air vents in the restaurant, and said, oh, I can't sit here, I've got to move somewhere else. We did this three times, and eventually he plaintively said to the waiter, you see, I have a problem with my voice. And I had the wit at that moment to go and hug him, because obviously his entire life consisted of alien drafts coming up pipes and through vents and attacking him and ruining his career and you know he'd be on the streets of Naples. So in a way there is often that insecure undertow to a lot of flamboyant behaviour.

Presenter29:15

Isn't it true of all of us, though we all get difficult when in fact we're scared to death?

Ronald Eyre29:18

Oh, precisely, yes. But sometimes, you know, in maybe an operatic rehearsal room, it's sometimes you have to sort of have a real good form of detachment before you realize that.

Presenter29:28

Record number seven.

Ronald Eyre29:30

This is connected with the opera. There was one very, very difficult rehearsal in Los Angeles, and I can't remember who was being difficult at the time. I'm sure it wasn't me.

Ronald Eyre29:39

And uh

Ronald Eyre29:41

I in despair sort of I looked round the room and I caught the eye of a s one of the singers right at the back of the stage and she winked. She gave me one of the longest winks I've ever known and held my eye with her non-winking eye and uh

Ronald Eyre29:57

That was wonderful. It was like a cold shower on a hot day. It was precisely what you wanted. And uh that was Barbara Hendricks, who I think was singing better than anybody else. And if I were on a desert island, I would need her to come with me and in record, and I would like her to sing a spiritual.

Speaker 430:14

Mary had a golden chain, every link was in Jesus' name. Keep your hand on the plough.

Speaker 430:23

Oh

Speaker 430:25

Keep on the cow and

Speaker 430:27

Time, every roar goes high and high. Keep your hand on the plough, hold on.

Speaker 430:36

Yeah.

Presenter30:56

Barbara Hendricks singing Hold On.

Presenter30:59

Do you ever get back to Mapplewell, Ron?

Ronald Eyre31:01

I do go sometimes. Yes, I have aunts there.

Presenter31:04

They remember you still, their famous son.

Ronald Eyre31:07

Well, I don't know. The relatives do.

Presenter31:09

But uh

Ronald Eyre31:10

And everybody else?

Presenter31:10

Uh

Presenter31:11

Are are you happy with the results of the uh the self-improvement that your parents so dearly wanted for you?

Ronald Eyre31:18

Well, I'm lumbered with it, aren't I? Um I think I s I've probably survived better by having gone to a school and m you know, got fed bits of Latin and Lord knows what. I feel I've it's a sort of water wings one gets and I've been grateful for that. Yes, and it leads to greater enjoyment of more things.

Presenter31:35

And you've just entered your your seventh decade, your sixty one.

Ronald Eyre31:39

Yep.

Presenter31:39

Does age weigh heavily on you at all, or aren't you bothered about all of that?

Ronald Eyre31:44

I don't think about age very much. I think uh doors have got to keep opening of some sort, uh and so long as there are one or two happening, that's fine.

Presenter31:52

But I know you've made quite a study of age, the seven ages of man, the Shakespearean seven ages. When at what age, I wonder, were you at your happiest?

Ronald Eyre32:02

Yeah.

Ronald Eyre32:03

I do know that making The Seven Ages, it did seem to me I related vividly to people who were under four.

Ronald Eyre32:10

and vividly to people who are over 80. So I don't know quite which end of the spectrum I am, but I know I'm not in the middle.

Presenter32:16

Because everybody of course thinks it's nice to be in your twenties and uh about to set out on life, but it's the most desperately honest

Ronald Eyre32:22

It's hellish. It's like it's like being stuck at the end of a diving board and pushed by other people wanting to dive and you wonder whether you'll ever make it or that's the problem I think. No, I think uh if you can keep a sort of childlikeness, if you have any capacity for that going, if you can keep various secrets from childhood and carry them into old age and see them blossom again in old age, probably that's the privileged state.

Presenter32:45

And if you have friends, are friends important to you?

Ronald Eyre32:47

Very much so. Oh, very much so. Yes, there's this network. I just feel that if I were to wobble from any diving board, since I mentioned it, um there would be quite a net there to keep me up.

Presenter33:00

Shall we have your last record?

Ronald Eyre33:02

I had the privilege of being

Ronald Eyre33:04

Asked to be sort of traffic warden during a concert in the Barbican where a lot of extremely distinguished musicians came and gave their services for the Armenian disaster and it was awesome to be alongside their mastery and then on that occasion to see their ease of manner and sweetness. I would like another Mozart record, Curious, too, I've had, and this would be a recording of part of the slow movement of Mozart's Symphonia Consciutanti, which was played on that occasion in the Barbican.

Presenter34:36

Hitzak Pellman and Pincus Zuckerman playing part of the slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta.

Presenter34:49

Well, now, which is the most important of those eight records for you?

Ronald Eyre34:53

My back were to the wall, I would have to take magic flute.

Presenter34:57

Right. The magical journeys of childhood, yes.

Presenter35:00

And a book.

Ronald Eyre35:02

I hope this is not cheating. I would like a talking book if I could. I would like to persuade Judy Dench to spend two weeks either she can choose herself either recording a great selection of fairy tales and folk tales or Brothers Karamatsov. I don't care which, but she should because I want to hear a human voice at some point.

Ronald Eyre35:24

On my island.

Presenter35:25

It's pushing it a bit, but could I get my

Ronald Eyre35:26

Could I get my lawyers in?

Presenter35:27

Yes, we'll we'll negotiate.

Ronald Eyre35:29

Yeah.

Presenter35:30

And and a luxury.

Ronald Eyre35:31

Well, I've yes, I went through a lot of luxuries. I mean bed socks, um Christmas cake. I came up finally with the feeling that what I would like is um a great supply of bulbs, flower bulbs, uh labelled so that I'd know when to plant them and how to treat them, uh so that all through the year, with any luck, I could be taken by surprise.

Presenter35:51

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

Ronald Eyre35:54

Thank you.

Speaker 136:03

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