Elijah Moshinsky

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 three and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a theatre, opera, and television director. He spent the first five years of his life in Shanghai, and then moved to a dull Melbourne suburb when the Communists forced his family to flee.

Presenter0:40

He studied for a postgraduate degree at Oxford, where his supervisor, Isaiah Berlin, taught him a great deal, but eventually advised him to follow a theatrical career. At the age of twenty eight he scored a tremendous success with the production of Peter Grimes at Coffin Garden. He moved on to the National Theatre, where a play he did flopped badly. He took a long time to recover his nerve, but, happily for audiences around the world, he's long been back on top. His recent productions include Albert Finney in The Green Man for television, and Robert Lindsay in both Beckett and Cyrano de Bergerac in The West End. He is Elijah

Presenter1:15

But you haven't made a movie yet, Elijah. Is that a field yet to conquer?

Elijah Moshinsky1:18

I suppose so, but I actually haven't been asked to make a movie yet. That's the main thing. And um I think the thing about making movies is that you more or less have to um have the idea first, you have to originate them.

Presenter1:28

The the obvious question um to someone with your diverse talents is which do you prefer, theatre, opera or television, or do they all have their merits and their disadvantages?

Elijah Moshinsky1:37

Well, I like the mixture, actually. I I I think they all do have their merits. They're often very similar, and if it goes well, they're very similar. But if it goes badly, they tend to be very different. I think doing a play and and getting stuck with a script that doesn't work and actors that don't work, it's quite different to doing an opera that takes flight musically. And it's rather good to be able to go from one to the other.

Presenter1:57

So the trick is the varied diet, but the trick is also then, presumably, to be freelance, not to be stuck in an institution like the B B C or the National Theatre, where you would might be required to do things that didn't exactly inspire you.

Elijah Moshinsky2:10

Well, it works for me to be freelance. I find that um I have eccentric tastes and sort of rather individual tastes and I I enjoy sort of mixing from one to the other and going from one to the other. And I find that one sort of reality informs the other. It's it's good to work with um good actors who are imaginative and careful and detailed and energetic, and then finally be um faced by an opera singer who um doesn't want to do anything except position his voice and throat in the right area of the opera house, and then sort of find that you have to try to introduce him to the world of acting.

Presenter2:40

And all of that works. Uh you know, being a freelance works as long as you're in demand. I mean, do you fear that the phone's not going to ring?

Elijah Moshinsky2:47

Oh yes, constantly it's just treading water all the time. And but also I find that that's sort of exciting. I think that um if you know what you're going to do next all the time and you know the level at which you're going to do it and you can plan it ahead of time, it it gives forth sometimes I find indirect as institutional art. I think the ability to have to move on to find new people to work with and to find employment it creates a a certain kind of uh excitement.

Presenter3:14

Keeps you fresh.

Presenter3:16

Tell me then about you music and a desert island. What will you need from your eight records?

Elijah Moshinsky3:21

What I'll need from my eight records is a mixture of music which will entertain me, music which will set off moods of things that have happened in the past, and also music that'll help me think and fantasise.

Presenter3:35

Which is the first?

Elijah Moshinsky3:36

The first piece of music is Schubert's string quartet in C major, but it needs to be played by the Amadeus Quartette with William Pleith, because it was a recording that my wife sent me when we were um, I suppose you'd call a courting in Melbourne. She sent me a recording of this, and it's become one of my most favourite pieces of music since.

Presenter4:54

William Pleith and the Amadeus Quartet playing part of Schubert's string quintet in C major.

Presenter4:59

You're now very firmly back in the theatre, Elijah, but there was a a ten year gap between'seventy six and'eighty six. What was this flop that broke your confidence?

Elijah Moshinsky5:10

Well, it was a um a play by Thomas Bernhardt called The Force of Habit. And it wasn't the play so much, it was the experience of doing it at the National at the time. It was the second play on at The Littleton and um the play had been very heavily subscribed because everyone wanted to come and see the theatre and it was absolutely full. And um I found that you couldn't hear after ten minutes for the sound of people walking out and the first thing I found out about the design of The Littleton is they should have an aisle up the centre, so people could walk out quietly.

Elijah Moshinsky5:39

But it was

Presenter5:39

But why were they walking out and was it so awful?

Elijah Moshinsky5:42

No, I I'm afraid I quite liked it. And ironically enough, uh it's about um a group of circus performers who wish to perform the chart quintet. And because they're circus performers they can't play the music. It's it's a parable about art. And um uh the Schubert's Chart quintet has become become quite a bugbear to me because of that play, so I can't choose it for my desert island.

Presenter6:03

But was it your production or or w was there something wrong with the play? I mean, what was the problem? People don't often actually get up and walk out. They grumble afterwards and say it wasn't very good, but they do walk out.

Elijah Moshinsky6:08

People don't.

Elijah Moshinsky6:10

I grumbled.

Elijah Moshinsky6:13

I can't tell any more. I think it's a mixture of the two, really. I think it's a play that people didn't want to see, which is what happens in theatre quite often. It was a first, an important break for me, which made me sort of hang on to it very importantly. And also, at the same time, I discovered how cruel the theatre system can be, and especially at the national at the time. It's not only.

Presenter6:13

Okay.

Presenter6:33

It's not only true.

Elijah Moshinsky6:34

Uh what was cruel about it is that I had never come across a situation where uh you were made to feel a failure. I was made to feel a failure by the administration of the National, and I was made to feel as if I had done something dreadfully wrong. I don't think I did do anything dreadfully wrong. I actually think it was a rather good production of a very difficult play which was scheduled in the wrong auditorium at the wrong time.

Presenter6:55

'Cause you'd had a success before. You'd had Troilus and Cressida, which had been a success, hadn't you?

Presenter6:59

And of course it must have hurt even more, because not only had you had this previous success at the National itself, but you'd had an outstanding success at the Royal Opera House with Peter Grimes just a couple of years earlier when you were hailed as the great young thing.

Elijah Moshinsky7:14

That's right. And I think it's one of the um sort of curves of uh a director's career, that that uh you tend to be discovered and then you have to learn your trade. Then you actually have to learn how to train,'cause there's no way of learning how to do it without actually doing it.

Presenter7:27

But tell me about that production of Peter Grimes. I mean, why why was it so successful?

Elijah Moshinsky7:32

Well, it was terribly good to begin with, and also it was an unexpected success in the sense that it was first billed to be a production by Tyron Guthrie that was being revived by me, but then it was discovered that the scenery of that production had, in fact, disintegrated in a warehouse near Oxford. And I suggested to the administration of the opera house that, for the price of reconstructing that scenery, I reinvent a new production of it. And I had a different reading of the opera altogether. I had a much tougher, more brechtian, more metaphysical reading of it, in which I put John Vickers in the centre of this interpretation as a sort of metaphysical figure. And it was a question of the starkness of the production and the sort of the intensity of his reading, which I think created a whole new view of the the opera itself. I think up to then the opera was a kind of

Elijah Moshinsky8:23

Picture of English village life. After that, I think it became a picture of the artist.

Presenter8:29

And it was a huge hit and went to La Scala Miland into two.

Elijah Moshinsky8:32

Yes, it was actually booked to go to La Scala before. The old production was booked to go to La Scala, but now they could take something new with them.

Presenter8:34

Before

Presenter8:38

Hm and it's still in the repertoire?

Elijah Moshinsky8:40

It's still in the repertoire and um I I consider it a great triumph if one can create productions which are sort of

Elijah Moshinsky8:47

Timeless enough and accurate enough to the spirit of the piece that they last a great distance.

Presenter8:51

Second record

Elijah Moshinsky8:53

My second record is um John Vickers, singing part of the aria from Beethoven's Fidelio, and this is because um John Vickers was that Peter Grimes, and I did quite a lot of work with him, and he taught me a great deal about opera.

Speaker 49:14

Oh and swallow.

Speaker 49:40

Nieshts, nishts libert all sorry.

Presenter10:02

John Vickers, singing part of the Aria Gott Veltstonkel here, from the second act of Beethoven's Fidelio, with a Philharmonia orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer. Um John Vickers, who's now retired, but Elijah, whom you still miss, I think.

Elijah Moshinsky10:14

Yes, he he was a person who was very important to me in my education in opera, and also who I think is very important in the history of opera, because I think he was a very, very great performer.

Elijah Moshinsky10:24

An inspired performer. His inspiration came from the music and for some sort of almost religious sense about the music. And he was a very great tenor before these last three great tenors. He was, as it were, a tenor of great moral standing before Shobiz came in. That's not to say he was better or worse than our current crop. But it was a different quality.

Presenter10:46

But on the other hand, you've been quite disparaging about opera stars in your time. I mean, there was uh a point when you were being quoted as saying that directing opera was like pushing egos around the stage. Have you changed your view? Have you just become more diplomatic?

Elijah Moshinsky10:58

It's not cute.

Elijah Moshinsky11:00

No, not at all. I I don't think the opera singers would actually disagree with that statement necessarily. I think one's dealing with outsized emotional events on stage and without those egos I mean John Vickers was a huge ego, who's a huge personality. It's part of bringing opera to life to to try to find people who can fill th these great heroic sung roles. And you can't always do it if you're a terribly nice person. Sometimes you have to be a monster.

Presenter11:27

But how do you deal as a director with those kind of fragile temperaments? You know, they ring you up and they're

Presenter11:32

coughing a little and they don't feel they can quite do it today. I mean, do you have to treat them like children?

Elijah Moshinsky11:37

Um that's part of it, but it's it's it's not as detached or as manipulative as that. Um I like their problems, uh otherwise I wouldn't be doing it, and I get involved with the problems of their temperament, and that's part of my job, is in fact to enable the best performance to occur, and one that interprets, you know, the the piece dramatically. But on an objective level they don't always sort of seem to inhabit the same sort of life that I inhabit, so that they they sometimes do seem to be creatures from an exotic and uh exotic planet with very large personalities.

Presenter12:07

So obviously it must be very different when you move from the opera into the theatre and start dealing with with actors, because then you've got people who really can move around the stage and really can act. I mean it's a bonus if an opera star can act.

Presenter12:20

I mean, it it must be quite a culture shock moving from one to the other.

Elijah Moshinsky12:23

Theoretically it should be, but on the other hand I think it would be wrong for us to think that actors have no egos either. Um because I think the the whole uh thing about performing is that you're willing to put your personality onstage for people to observe, admire and criticize.

Presenter12:37

But it's a different technique for the director, suddenly to be working with somebody like Derek Jacoby or Albert Finney or Robert Lindsay after dealing with an opera star who's fairly wooden.

Elijah Moshinsky12:48

Yes, that's absolutely true. But on the other hand, if I took an opera star that I've worked with, someone like, say, Pavarotti, um, he he didn't move around the stage a great deal. But on the other hand, he and I worked together on a reading of a character of Gustavus in the Mouse Ball, and he did it with his voice, and he did it with his personality, and it was as alive as, say, Derek Jacobi or Robert Lindsay would do a character like that. But the idiom and the language and the grammar is different. But the other strange thing about it is the fact that sometimes the most difficult opera singers to deal with are in fact the ones who are straight out of college or the ones who've just arrived in London. They have a point to prove about their stardom. They tend to push their status probably more than the great superstars. The superstars are actually quite easy to work with because th they've seen the game and they know that if you have a good production to offer them, they will take it. Whereas people starting often tend to raise enormous objections and carry on.

Presenter13:45

Let's have your next record.

Elijah Moshinsky13:46

My next record is an extract from Don Giovanni, and it's quite an important record on several counts. One of them is that John Brownlee, an Australian baritone, is singing Don Giovanni and it was the first opera that my father took me to and I saw John Brownlee sing it. I remember at the time he ate spaghetti before the Commendatorio came in. Made a deep impression. But this is the Gleinborn recording conducted by Fritz Busch.

Elijah Moshinsky14:18

I'm not sure.

Speaker 414:22

Covens of sand.

Speaker 414:27

Building also

Speaker 414:35

A fair party plant

Speaker 414:41

And come up here, he's a part of our field.

Presenter15:13

John Brownlee, David Franklin, and Salvatore Baccolone singing the aria A Soccorso from Act One of Mozart's Don Giovanni, with the Gleinborn Festival Orchestra conducted by Fritz Busch, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty six.

Presenter15:27

It was the first opera you say that your father took you to, Elijah Moshinsky. That was in Australia, was it?

Elijah Moshinsky15:32

That's right, in nineteen fifty six.

Presenter15:35

But you'd begun life in Shanghai. Now, how did that come about? What nationality are you?

Elijah Moshinsky15:39

Well, I'm actually I'm Australian, but uh my parents were Russian Jews and they were uh refugees living in um the French concession in Shanghai, and uh we were stateless until we went to Australia.

Presenter15:51

But you spent those first five years there. Do you remember much about it at all? What kind of lifestyle was it you had there?

Elijah Moshinsky15:56

Well, I I it it was strangely glamorous. I have all these photographs of uh my my parents sitting at night clubs with um large hats and uh evening wear, and I remember sort of um assuming it's exactly like Empire of the Sun, a rather wonderful sort of unreal existence.

Presenter16:13

And and your family were well off there, were they?

Elijah Moshinsky16:15

Yes, they were. My uh grandfather had a um cardboard box factory, and he made um cardboard boxes with pictures of Swiss chalets on them, and apparently um did rather well.

Presenter16:26

But suddenly in'fifty one' the family had to flee. Do you remember that moment at all?

Elijah Moshinsky16:30

Yes, I do, because I remember my um father taking me out on to the balcony of these flats that we were living in, and there was gunfire, and he said this is Mao Tzi tung entry in Shanghai, you must remember it.

Presenter16:42

And you do.

Elijah Moshinsky16:42

So I do, yes.

Presenter16:44

And w did the family have to leave all of the wealth out of the cardboard box company behind?

Elijah Moshinsky16:48

Well, it somehow got smuggled out. I don't know exactly how. I know that uh I had to wear sort of um diamond rings in my trousers when we went out. We weren't allowed to take anything out of, obviously, but but for some reason it it got smuggled out.

Presenter17:01

So then you arrived in in Melbourne. Why Australia?

Elijah Moshinsky17:05

Well, my um parents found relations in in Melbourne because we had to have someone to sponsor us somewhere. I think I think they actually wanted to go to America, but we ended up in Australia and and in Melbourne no one knew anything about Melbourne. We ended up uh used to a a sort of rather rich country life existence in this very strange Australian suburb.

Presenter17:26

Were you aware of that, even as a five year old, the vast cultural difference between Shanghai and Melbourne?

Elijah Moshinsky17:31

Yes, largely because my father had packed uh what he thought were proper clothing supplies, which include gold lame smoking jackets.

Presenter17:38

And how did your parents take to it? I mean, were they were they happy there or was it so different they were unhappy?

Elijah Moshinsky17:43

No, I I think they were happy, but my father never could make a go of it. Um he tried to get businesses going, and I remember at one stage um he tried to import rubber flowers into Australia, another stage he tried to manufacture toilet paper. It was all a series of kind of strange business ventures which didn't lead anywhere. But um we s we seemed to keep on going.

Presenter18:03

Shall we have the next piece of music there?

Elijah Moshinsky18:05

Yes, now the next piece of music reminds me very much of my parents, because they used to get uh show tune records, and uh a great favourite of theirs was Ethel Merman, and in a curious way I suspect that this is my philosophy of life. It's Ethel Merman singing There's no business like show business.

Speaker 218:21

There's no business like show business if you tell me it's so

Speaker 418:29

Traveling through the country is a pretty standing out in front on opening nights.

Speaker 418:36

Smiling as you watch the benches filling and see your billing out there in lights.

Speaker 218:40

Uh

Speaker 218:42

Yeah.

Speaker 218:43

There's no people like show people. They smile when they are lost.

Presenter18:51

Ethel Merman, Bruce Yarnell, and Jerry Auberbach and there's no business like show business.

Presenter18:56

You went to a a good school along with your two brothers in Melbourne, and you went on to university to read history and law, but it was drama and the university rep company that was your salvation, apparently, was it?

Elijah Moshinsky19:08

I think Salvation is putting it at too high a price, but it certainly was much more interesting than the the lectures and tutorials.

Presenter19:14

You neglected your work in favour of the drama, is uh?

Elijah Moshinsky19:16

Yeah, well complimented it, I think is a better way of putting it.

Presenter19:20

But were you already plotting your escape from Australia?

Elijah Moshinsky19:23

Well, I knew I wanted to leave. I it drama didn't really enter as part of the escape. I suppose imaginatively it did, but I I never thought I'd end up working in the theatre because it seemed to be such a dis disreputable occupation and no one actually did it. No one actually went into the theatre in Melbourne. So um I knew I had to get out one way or the other because the boredom was actually rather like Madame Bovery. It it was almost unendurable.

Presenter19:46

So you you got a first and you wrote off to Saint Anthony's College, wasn't it, Oxford?

Elijah Moshinsky19:51

That's right, I was encouraged to do that.

Presenter19:53

And uh eventually you it was agreed that you could go there to do a doctorate in

Elijah Moshinsky19:58

Well, I ended up starting a doctorate in Russian liberal thought, focussing on Alexander Herzen, but I think it's because his Ibel then took pity on me, because no one actually wanted to be my supervisor at all.

Presenter20:08

Why not?

Elijah Moshinsky20:09

Well, I don't know. This strange man from Australia came and I I tried various topics which no one wanted to take on, but I was actually, as it were, history mad, and I still am. And I got very interested in the whole question of the failure of liberalism in Russia, which seemed at the time to be a total lost cause. It's quite interesting what's happened since.

Presenter20:29

So Isaiah Berlin took you under his wing. Did did you speak in Russian to each other?

Elijah Moshinsky20:34

Uh no, no, no. I spoke Australian English, and he spoke proper English, and slowly he taught me proper English.

Presenter20:40

And you read him an essay while during this teaching uh once a week for three years.

Elijah Moshinsky20:45

That's right.

Presenter20:45

and at the end of it she told you your future was in the theatre.

Elijah Moshinsky20:48

Well, it wasn't quite as simple as that. I I of course got terribly involved in university drama and I I in a sense got very, very interested in that and it was quite clear that uh that's where my interest was.

Presenter20:58

So the minute he suggested that you go into the theatre, you didn't give it a second thought. You thought, That's absolutely right, he's got me right and I'm going to do what he says.

Elijah Moshinsky21:06

Well, actually I had already gone. I'd already gone and got a job as an assistant director at Coffin Garden, and he wrote me a postcard saying, Where are you? So it wasn't that that he told me, it's sort of I think events overtook us.

Presenter21:17

And we never finished the thesis.

Elijah Moshinsky21:19

No, I haven't finished the th thesis, but one day one day I might.

Presenter21:23

Next piece of music.

Elijah Moshinsky21:25

Now my next piece of music is part of Brahms's Symphony No. four in E minor, played by the Vienna Philharmonic, but it's conducted by Carlos Kleiber, who I did a production of Otello with, and whom I admire greatly above many conductors.

Presenter22:35

Part of Brahm's symphony number four in E minor, played by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Carlos Kleiber.

Presenter22:42

It's one thing to decide your future is in the theatre, Elijah Moshinsky, but it it's quite another thing to make it happen, and luck usually plays the biggest part. Is that true in your case?

Elijah Moshinsky22:51

Yes, I mean my my philosophy has always been that um I don't make a career. I don't quite understand what a career is. It's it's happens to be what I'm doing or what I'm able to do. And often um it's just what presents itself and what comes along and what what um tends to arrive at your doorstep rather than um plotting away at it. I'm not a very um plotting or political person.

Presenter23:12

But how did the uh the entry into Covent Garden arrive on your doorstep? That must have been sheer luck.

Elijah Moshinsky23:17

Yes, that was sheer luck. I'll tell you the story of that. John Tooley happened to be passing Oxford, and he saw As You Like It, which was something I did for the Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company. So I was able to apply to him for a job as an assistant director at Covent Garden, and eventually I got the job, and eventually Tyrion Guthrie's production of Peter Grimes collapsed, and eventually I did mine. And in a sense, it's luck. But on the other hand, those lucky breaks happen quite often, and sometimes you miss them, sometimes sometimes they fall through, and sometimes you don't do well enough.

Presenter23:48

But it was luck that Sir John Tooley, head of the Opera House, happened by at the right moment in your life.

Presenter23:53

Apart from the flop at the National we've talked about, you've gone on being lucky, really, haven't you?

Elijah Moshinsky23:57

Yes, I wish you wouldn't keep using the word flop all the time.

Presenter24:00

Duh.

Elijah Moshinsky24:01

Yeah.

Presenter24:01

Disaster.

Elijah Moshinsky24:03

Oh no, it was it was ahead of its time.

Presenter24:05

Right. How much of yourself do you do you put into your productions? By which I mean how how faithful do you try I don't know if you can generalize about this, but how faithful do you try to be to the text as received, or do you enjoy saying, Let's set it in another place, another time, in different costume?

Elijah Moshinsky24:06

How much

Elijah Moshinsky24:21

I don't think fidelity and authenticity is is what I'm after. I'm after trying to find, as it were, the emotional dramatic heart of a piece. And sometimes you have to be very interpretive to get that. Sometimes you have to have a theory about a piece, or you have to have a very strong individual line on it. At other times, you have to be extremely faithful. I found when I did Otello at Covent Garden, I felt it was terribly important to have a sense of fidelity to the Italian romantic grand style, which I was greatly criticised for, because I was considered not to be adventurous for that. But on the other hand, I thought that was the way in which to get to the heart of these great romantic emotions.

Presenter25:00

But then with with your current production of Cyrano, you've got a very up to the minute translation, and in the middle of it Cyrano is saying to the the young man who's his rival in love, Give us a kiss.

Elijah Moshinsky25:10

That's right. But that's a translation of the French on Brasse-Moire. But the idea is, of course, to bring it to life. What was very important for me in Syrano, and I discussed this quite a lot with Robert Lindsay, was in fact the sense of direct experienced life. I mean, that production had to in a sense embody and give us the sense of living life to the full, which is what I think the play is about. It isn't only living life through poetry, which is what people often think the play is about.

Presenter25:39

More music.

Elijah Moshinsky25:40

The next recording is a Schubert Chiaro sonata. It's one of his late sonatas and it's played by Maurizio Pollini. I want it because this is music I play quite often to myself, because I find this is music which is in conversation with itself, and sometimes when I have a um

Elijah Moshinsky25:55

A problem with dialogue, a problem of scenic structure. I often go to music to try to find a way to create the right sort of sense of mood and structure. And this is a piece of music which was um quite inspirational in lots of productions I've done.

Presenter27:07

Maurizio Pollini playing part of the first movement of Schubert's piano sonata in B flat major.

Presenter27:13

Is this you writing, Elijah? Directing opera in Europe is a ghastly experience. They don't speak English, the opera houses are inefficient and full of intrigue, and generally most of the fee goes on incomprehensible taxes.

Elijah Moshinsky27:25

Sounds like me, doesn't it? I think it is me. Yes, it is.

Presenter27:28

Is that true? Is that completely true?

Elijah Moshinsky27:31

It's certainly how I've experienced it. And I think that it's w one of the things about um uh the life one leads in the theatre is that you think in order to lead a great career you have to work at the great places. But in fact I found when I worked at the great places the experience was somewhat less than I had imagined it. And in the end it w it it's this terrible trial of trying to get through um the temperaments of the Italians or whatever and try to get the show on.

Presenter27:56

But obviously, you do quite a lot of it, whatever you you think of it. It it does sound, actually, reading about you, as if you're a bit of a workaholic. Would you plead guilty?

Elijah Moshinsky28:04

Now, I'm not a workaholic, but being a freelance director, of course, you have to try to keep in work. And I'm a great believer in um artistic practice. And I think that it's it's like riding a horse. I mean, wh when you have a failure, that what you have to do is you have to go out and work again and analyze the sources of the failure and see if you can keep on working.

Elijah Moshinsky28:20

It's not being a workaholic, it's actually just keeping in work.

Presenter28:23

What would your family say?

Presenter28:25

you know, that they suffer from a bit of neglect.

Elijah Moshinsky28:28

They might say that. My my children tend to say that I'm on the phone all the time.

Elijah Moshinsky28:33

But, on the other hand, they would rather have me um happily in work than rather unhappily at home.

Presenter28:38

You've talked a lot about understanding the people you're working with, the performers, and obviously you're very sensitive to them and you get good results out of them. But is there also in you, and does there have to be in a good director, a ruthless streak? I mean, at the end of the day, when you've coaxed and cajoled and you can't quite get what you want, are you able to say, I'm awfully sorry, I really don't think this part is for you?

Elijah Moshinsky28:58

Yes, yes there is and and it's something that one actually learns one has to do. I remember I once did a play and um there was a person in the company who hated being in the play and was giving a terrible performance and I was too nice and too frightened to sack this person and it ruined the whole whole production. And I now know that you actually have to face the the unpalatable as a director and in fact people rely on you to do that because they rely on you to deliver a good show and you have to do what you have to do.

Presenter29:28

But being nasty comes easily.

Elijah Moshinsky29:30

No, I didn't say being nasty. I just said you had to do what you had to do.

Presenter29:35

Uh your next record, what is it? Number seven.

Elijah Moshinsky29:37

My next record is The Last Moments of Rigoletto, sung by Maria Cala Sentito Gobbi, and I think in this record you you will have the complete essence of Italian opera and Verdi, which I I absolutely love.

Speaker 429:53

What if we saw it free soil holy man?

Speaker 429:58

Not my breathless.

Speaker 430:24

The finger no more you

Speaker 430:37

No la shar be on the

Speaker 430:48

Mm.

Presenter30:51

Maria Callas and Tito Gobby singing the duet Vo Ingonato Culpevole Fui, from Verdi's Rigoletto, with the orchestra of La Scala Milan, conducted by Tullio Seraffine.

Presenter31:02

There's uh quite a bit of Verdi here. No, Wagner. You used to be quite a Wagnerite, apparently. What's happened? There's not a piece of Wagner in the Eight.

Elijah Moshinsky31:10

Well, I wouldn't take Wagner on my desert island, I'm afraid.

Presenter31:12

Due to Earth.

Elijah Moshinsky31:14

No, it's not that it's depressing. It's well I think one of the things I like to do on my Desert Island is in fact um stage these operas in my mind as it were and um I'm much more interested in um the cut and thrust of human passion and I find um something about Wagner which is full of um sort of Germanic and s self-defeated concepts and um ambiguities which I don't find interesting and um in the end I it's a bit sludgy for my taste.

Presenter31:38

So you prepare now to set sail to your island. What are you going to do there all day, do you think?

Elijah Moshinsky31:43

I haven't a clue. I I think I'll get very, very bored, to be quite honest. I don't fancy going to a desert island.

Presenter31:49

And I wonder what you'll miss most, your wife and children apart.

Elijah Moshinsky31:53

I think what I'll miss most I know it sounds sounds rather silly I think I'll miss London. I think I'll I'll miss living in in the city and having all the um difficulties and problems of um everyday life.

Presenter32:03

And you'll miss the telephone, which is a permanent extension to your arm, by all accounts.

Elijah Moshinsky32:07

Yes, but um that that may not be uh perhaps I could be weaned off the telephone.

Speaker 432:12

Last record.

Elijah Moshinsky32:13

My last record is The Verde Requiem, and I'd like to have it sung by um Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, and conducted by George Shulte. I um did two operas with Joan Sutherland in Australia, and I think she's a she's a very great artist and a great Australian. And I did uh two operas with George Shulte, and I think uh he's a great artist, but not an Australian.

Presenter32:33

And it's a wonderful piece of music, actually.

Elijah Moshinsky32:34

Yes.

Speaker 432:40

Hey, what you still

Speaker 432:49

Great Holy Sheka.

Speaker 432:59

Oh, God, I'm not sure if you can see it.

Presenter33:36

Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, and the Vienna State Opera Chorus, conducted by Sir George Schulte, singing part of the Annus Dei from Verdi's Requiem. So if you could only take one of the eight records, Elijah.

Elijah Moshinsky33:48

I think I take the Verdi Requiem because I think it's a piece of music where, as they say, all human life is there, and it's the one that has, I think, the greatest v variety of colour.

Presenter33:54

Let's

Presenter33:58

And your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare, which are sitting on the beach, waiting.

Elijah Moshinsky34:02

The complete plays of Chekhov translated by Michael Frayne.

Presenter34:06

You've directed one of those at least, haven't you? The Three Sisters.

Elijah Moshinsky34:09

Yes, I did The Three Sisters and I did Ivanov.

Presenter34:11

As well.

Presenter34:13

And your luxury?

Elijah Moshinsky34:14

Well, my luxury ideally would be the Carnegie Daily from New York, but I'm told that the rules don't permit the Carnegie Daily from New York because I would have to have people to operate it. So I have um changed my mind, and uh for my luxury I would like to take an enormous snuggly duvet.

Presenter34:31

Are you are you expecting it to be cold on your desert island, then?

Elijah Moshinsky34:33

No, but I think it'd be rather comforting to have it.

Presenter34:37

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

Elijah Moshinsky34:40

Thank you.

Speaker 434:49

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