Nicholas Hytner

Speaker 30:00

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 30:08

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

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is a theatre director. The son of an affluent middle class Manchester family, he went up to Cambridge determined to be an actor. He left saying he was a director, and in the sixteen years since then his successes have been large and consistent. They include Miss Saigon, Wind in the Willows, Xerxes at the ENO, Carousel, and most recently the importance of being earnest. Art for all and down with the barriers is his philosophy, and if there's an element of showbiz in all his work, he's not ashamed of it. He is Nicholas Heitner. Indeed, Nicholas, you've said that you need almost to sniff the possibility of a piece being a monster hit when you're considering whether to take it on or not, which is a very showbiz thing to say.

Nicholas Hytner1:11

I think what I mean by that is that

Nicholas Hytner1:13

Whatever I'm involved in, I want it to be as accessible as possible to the largest possible number of people, and whether it is Carousel or whether it's The Tempest.

Nicholas Hytner1:24

I want as many people as possible to

Nicholas Hytner1:28

Join in that experience.

Nicholas Hytner1:30

There are all sorts of ways of making this

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mythical monster hit. If you're doing the Tempest, for instance

Nicholas Hytner1:36

What you've got to do is find an actor of extraordinary charisma to play Prospero. And I asked John Wood to play Prospero. If you're doing Carousel.

Nicholas Hytner1:46

You want to make sure that the truth at the centre of it is pristine, but also.

Nicholas Hytner1:54

Open.

Presenter1:55

So i is it your feeling that if you can capture the visual imagination of of of the audience, that that then you've got a better chance of getting the real message, the intellectual message, across? Can I put it as simplistically as that?

Nicholas Hytner2:08

No, because I think that that

Nicholas Hytner2:11

I have on occasion been seduced by

Nicholas Hytner2:15

what might be called an element of visual display, which

Nicholas Hytner2:19

regrettably, can exist independently of the feeling and thought at the centre of a show. I believe that in the ideal evening in the theatre meaning and feeling are carried equally by the way it looks, by what is said, by the way it sounds it should be a total experience.

Presenter2:36

And you quite like a bit of raw emotion. You quite like making your audiences cry, don't you? And you did that both in Miss Saigon and in Carousel. The Kleenex were out.

Nicholas Hytner2:45

Yeah, I think probably um Rogers and Hammerstein did it in Carousel, and I love to be involved in an evening in the theatre where a thousand people are collectively moved, collectively changed, collectively made to feel things about themselves as individuals and about themselves as a group which they wouldn't otherwise feel. That's what the theatre's about.

Presenter3:03

We'd better have your first record, I think.

Nicholas Hytner3:05

Uh my first record is, I'm afraid, from Carousel. It's uh recording from the radio of uh Joanna Riding and Michael Hayden, my two stars, singing the best number, If I Loved You.

Speaker 43:17

If I loved you And time and again I would try to say

Speaker 43:27

Oh, I'd want you to hear.

Speaker 43:37

If I loved you wides wouldn't come in an easy way.

Presenter3:47

Joanna Riding, singing If I Loved You from my Costaway Nicholas Heitner's production of Carousel at the National Theatre. The thing about Carousel, which is Richard Rogers' music, of course, and and one also thinks of Gershwin's Crazy For You, which is on in the West End at the moment, is they're so full of good tunes, these shows, Nicholas.

Nicholas Hytner4:04

Yes. Rogers, Gershwin, Mozart, Verdi, they all wrote fabulous tunes. Mozart and Verdi deliberately set out to be musically rather more soph sophisticated, although I both of them

Nicholas Hytner4:18

particularly in their early days, and Mozart right at the end of his days in the magic flute, would, I guess, have said that they were involved in show business.

Nicholas Hytner4:26

Ultimately, a great tune is a great tune wherever it is.

Presenter4:30

But how do they compare with modern composers then? People who are writing musicals today, Andrew Lloyd Webber one immediately thinks of.

Nicholas Hytner4:36

Oh, Andrew Lloyd Webber writes very good tunes, but um

Nicholas Hytner4:40

I'm sure Andrew Lloyd Webber wouldn't um wouldn't dare to compare himself with Richard Rogers. The right Richard Rogers was one of the great tunesmiths of all time.

Presenter4:47

What is the gap then in your view? I mean, is it just in the tune or is it in the lyrics as well? Is it in that that simplicity of the message that you've been talking about?

Nicholas Hytner4:58

I think

Nicholas Hytner5:00

What

Nicholas Hytner5:01

What distinguishes the Rogers and Hammerstein partnership is the absolute appropriateness of the tune to the emotion. That involves a perfection of musical expression and a perf perfection of lyrical expression, which I d I don't I don't see around very much anymore. I think maybe in the forties and fifties Hammerstein had access to a depth of sentiment and a type of sentiment which would now be thought phony.

Nicholas Hytner5:29

Hammerstein's true heir is Sondheim, but Sondheim is an ironist, a cynic, and quite rightly, because Sondheim is the poet of the seventies, eighties, and nineties, Hammerstein was able to write

Nicholas Hytner5:43

The song about being in love, without that veil of toughness and irony which I think is necessary, and I think we know too much.

Presenter5:49

Hmm. We're too cynical now as audiences are.

Nicholas Hytner5:53

Yes, and I think one of the reasons for doing these old shows is to try and reawaken in us a simplicity which I guess we regret we've lost. Echo number two.

Nicholas Hytner6:04

is from Bertie's Falstaff, which is one of the very greatest operas, written right at the end of his life, well into his eighties. He is able to produce two kids telling each other how much they fancy each other, and music of such grace and rapture and simplicity that it blows me away.

Speaker 46:47

Ohija Matar

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Far body, Johnny.

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Mama Pretor, Giliosa Cedar.

Presenter6:56

You're so sinner.

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In the hot

Presenter7:07

So the pretty good

Presenter7:14

Alfredo Kraus and Mirela Freini singing the love duet from Act One of Verdi's Falstaff with the RCA Italiana Opera Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter7:24

But in the beginning, Nicholas Heitner, you wanted to be an actor, didn't you? Were you were you allowed to be one at school?

Nicholas Hytner7:30

Yes, I did a lot of acting at school, all of the show off variety. And um it um it took me a bit of time to find out that that's the only acting I was capable of doing.

Presenter7:40

What did you play? Who were you at school?

Nicholas Hytner7:43

I was some toad of Toad Hall.

Nicholas Hytner7:46

I was the good fairy in Apanto. I was once the Doctor in the Seagull, which was um which was when I realized that uh I would have preferred to have been playing Toad of Toad Hall, and I was I I was those sort of parts.

Presenter7:59

You're apparently a great triumph singing rather flat in Oh, What a lovely war.

Nicholas Hytner8:03

Yes, uh that was when I was very little, um, and I was the nurse who sang um Keep the Home Fires Burning at the end of the show, directed by a schoolmaster called Brian Fithian, who was a huge influence on my life, who died recently.

Nicholas Hytner8:17

Uh who

Nicholas Hytner8:19

directed shows at Manchester Grammar School, where where I was with a sort of uh flair and precision which I think I've been copying ever since.

Presenter8:27

And musically the influences were strong. Season ticket to the Halley age nine. My goodness, that was precocious.

Nicholas Hytner8:33

I'm not sure it was nine. I I think um my parents and grandparents, who i in the in the great um Jewish middle class tradition were support great supporters of the theatre and and symphony concerts in Manchester, started taking me occasionally when I was young.

Presenter8:50

And also I read that while other boys were arguing the merits of various pop groups you were blown away by the ring cycle.

Nicholas Hytner8:57

Yes. I've occasionally said, rather grandly, that that was an adolescent phase. I'm no longer um a great Wagnerian. But uh i it w it was a school where we were all too big for our boots and and quite clever and um they would

Nicholas Hytner9:13

argue for King Crimson and I would argue for Das Rheingold and um we'd think a lot of ourselves.

Presenter9:19

And your father was and and still is a lawyer, and eventually you were sent off to Trinity, Cambridge to follow in his footsteps.

Presenter9:26

I mean, was there ever any danger of your becoming a lawyer?

Nicholas Hytner9:29

I don't think there was. I went to Trinity Hall and I read law for about six weeks because I think I thought I needed to have a proper job. But in the seventies, luckily, there wasn't so much of a pressure on us to have proper jobs. So I read English and directed a lot of plays and performed in a lot of knockabout stuff and had a good time. Record number three. Record number three is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds from The Beatles Sergeant Pepper, which I just think is probably compulsory for somebody of my generation.

Speaker 410:11

For the girl with the sun in her eyes, and she's gone.

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Lucy in the sky with diamond Lucy in the sky with diamonds

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The sea in the sky with that

Presenter10:34

The Beatles and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. So you arrived at Cambridge kind of saying I'm an actor, but certainly when you left you were saying I'm a director. What happened in between?'Cause you did a bit of acting there, didn't you?

Nicholas Hytner10:47

I did quite a lot of acting. I acted with the footlights ma mostly. Um well, I realized that

Nicholas Hytner10:53

There were better actors than me. I realized also that I didn't have an actor's concentration. An actor needs to be.

Nicholas Hytner11:00

Single-minded, obsessive about making himself into somebody else, into into seeing a world.

Nicholas Hytner11:08

from his character's point of view. It's not an actor's job to have an overview. It's not an actor's job to worry too much about what everybody else on stage is doing. He should be

Nicholas Hytner11:22

in that world as himself. And I found my attention wandering the whole time on stage and uh I found all I was really interested in doing on stage was making the audience laugh, which I I did rather too often uh in plays where I shouldn't have done.

Presenter11:35

What was your biggest directorial success at Cambridge?

Nicholas Hytner11:38

I did a couple of operas, uh the Brecht Weil, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagoni, The Coronation of Popea by Monteverdi, I did Love's Labour's Lost, I did uh A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, all the all the which is a Jacobean comedy. Uh I was just finding out whether I liked doing it. It's a time which I wouldn't have missed and was and was important for me.

Presenter11:58

And you went down um in seventy seven and went into opera direction, which you say you've done some there, but I mean it wasn't necessarily the trendy thing to do at the time, was it? It was but it was quite a clever choice on your part.

Nicholas Hytner12:11

I wish I could claim it was a clever choice. I went into opera because I couldn't get any work in the spoken theatre. But it was an exciting time in the opera world.

Presenter12:20

But you got a a big break eventually at the ENO you were asked to um direct Aida.

Presenter12:26

And it was a terrible flop.

Nicholas Hytner12:28

Oh, it was it it was the touring production of Aida. I was incredibly pleased with myself. I'd just done Britain's Turn of the Screw for Kent Opera. The Turn of the Screw was um

Nicholas Hytner12:38

A very good break.

Nicholas Hytner12:41

to get because you can't really mess it up. It's it's infallible. It's that is an an opera which works. So it worked and I thought I was a genius. And

Nicholas Hytner12:54

I took on this touring production of Aida, and it was absolutely awful. And it was it was a useful and salutary experience, which I've had on far too many occasions since, where you sit in an auditorium and you watch something and you think this is awful. It's one of the worst things I've ever seen. And I did it.

Presenter13:11

And I did it.

Nicholas Hytner13:12

Yeah.

Presenter13:13

Yeah. Awful. Wh who or what then picked you up from that?

Nicholas Hytner13:17

Well, they were terribly forgiving at the Coliseum. I yelled and screamed and behaved as if I was Zepharelli. It was like water off a duck's back to them. They they didn't really care, and and I went on and did more operas for Kent opera, and gradually learned how to do it.

Nicholas Hytner13:33

Yeah.

Presenter13:33

Next record.

Nicholas Hytner13:34

Uh

Presenter13:34

Yeah.

Nicholas Hytner13:35

My next record I've chosen simply because of its extraordinary beauty. It's the slow movement from Schubert's B flat major piano trio. It's also something that

Nicholas Hytner13:47

It reminds me of

Nicholas Hytner13:48

My grandfather, who was a big part of my life, when he died he left a huge collection of LPs which when we went through them we discovered he'd sort of coded a system known only to him of stars, which he'd scribbled on the record sleeves, and this got maximum number of stars.

Presenter15:05

Part of the second movement of Schubert's Trio Number One for piano, violin and cello, played by Leonard Rose, Eugene Istomin and Isaac Stern.

Presenter15:14

These days, Nicholas Heitner, you're an Associate Director at the National Theatre, which is a a smart title, but and gives you some smashing work, but I suspect not a lot of money.

Nicholas Hytner15:24

No, working at the National Theatre has nothing to do with money. I don't get any money for being Associate Director of the National Theatre. The subsidised theatre is subsidised as much by the people who work in it as it is by the government. I'm terribly fortunate because I do have a big commercial hit running in Miss Saigon, which m makes me very comfortable.

Presenter15:45

And the importance of being earnest, presumably, is bringing in some bacon.

Nicholas Hytner15:48

Yes, it's um plays aren't on in the same commercial league as musicals. But the um

Nicholas Hytner15:55

Actors who work at the National Theatre really are paid very little.

Nicholas Hytner16:01

Famous actors earn

Nicholas Hytner16:03

a huge amount less than they could pull in on the television. I'm sure, for instance, that Nigel Hawthorne, who plays George the Third in Alan Bennett's play, The Man as a George the Third, could be, um could be earning much more if he wanted to elsewhere.

Presenter16:18

Is it true that Alan Bennett wrote that play specifically for you to direct?

Nicholas Hytner16:23

No, I don't think he wrote it for me to direct. I think he wrote it because he he was fascinated by the subject matter. He did um shove it through my letter box um shortly after he'd finished it. And um he said afterwards that he felt like he'd been a practical joker at shoving a a a load of manure into uh into into my front hall. But uh

Presenter16:44

But what did you think when you picked it up and read it? Did you did you sniff a hit?

Nicholas Hytner16:48

Oh, sure. It was about six hours long, but it was um it was a very exciting read. The thing about Alan is it doesn't matter if it's six hours long, he cannot write a dull line.

Nicholas Hytner16:59

Working through various drafts with him was easy and hugely enjoyable because it's a matter of of choosing which diamonds have the higher carrot value.

Presenter17:10

And you'd already done his Wind in the Willows and with him, of course. So, I mean, it's a very fruitful partnership, yours and his.

Nicholas Hytner17:17

Those two shows, um, I'm very proud of.

Presenter17:20

He says he can always tell if your rehearsals aren't going well'cause there's a clutch of smokers outside the door muttering to each other.

Nicholas Hytner17:27

Yeah. When I get tense, I th throw the smokers out. In that respect, I'm still the fiendish Zephyrilli clone that did Aida at I know, otherwise I hope I've calmed down.

Presenter17:39

And then there's Cameron Mackintosh for whom you directed Miss Saigon. He's called you a ferocious perfectionist.

Nicholas Hytner17:45

You see, being a director is is it's an odd job. It's a job that's only been invented fairly recently. Uh and what appears to have happened is that since we invented ourselves, um we've now made ourselves important and put ourselves at the apex of the triangle. And I think often this is um

Nicholas Hytner18:05

This is

Nicholas Hytner18:07

not a a healthy state of affairs. Being ferociously perfectionist is perhaps a substitute for having done the real jobs. Uh I never wrote anything, and I can't act.

Nicholas Hytner18:21

In a sense, it's very hard to describe what a director does. Maybe that's why we have created a rather absurd mystique around ourselves. Often it's simply a matter of creating the right circumstances, of creating the right world on the stage, of creating a rehearsal process in which actors can bring the best out of themselves. I can't teach anybody to act, I'm not an acting teacher anywhere either. I there's no way I could tell Maggie Smith how to play Lady Bracknell. Uh there is nothing about playing Lady Bracknell which Maggie Smith doesn't know for herself.

Nicholas Hytner18:58

All I can do is attempt to create the right circumstances for Maggie Smith to play

Nicholas Hytner19:04

the perfect Lady Bracknell, in the perfect company, and any shortfall is mine, not hers.

Presenter19:11

Rumour has it, though, that you fell out with Maggie Smith, nevertheless.

Nicholas Hytner19:15

Now rumour has it wrong.

Nicholas Hytner19:16

I I didn't fall out with Maggie. Maggie fell out with you. No, Maggie didn't fall out with me either. Maggie is a ferocious perfectionist. Maggie is never happy with it m with anything.

Nicholas Hytner19:28

most of all herself. That's why she's so good. She's a genius. Working with Maggie is a challenging and difficult experience because

Nicholas Hytner19:38

She will never.

Nicholas Hytner19:40

Accept.

Nicholas Hytner19:41

Anything.

Nicholas Hytner19:42

But the best, if it's not the best, she has antennae for below par work, whether it's directorial or from other actors, which are second to none, and she has a right to have those. There's nobody like her.

Presenter19:58

Yeah.

Nicholas Hytner19:58

Record number five.

Nicholas Hytner19:59

Record number five is the slow movement of Prokofiev's second violin concerto, which is.

Nicholas Hytner20:05

Here simply because it's beautiful.

Presenter21:07

Part of the second movement of Prokofiev's violin concerto, Number Two, in G minor, played by Shlomo Mintz, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abardo.

Presenter21:17

Let's talk about you and opera, Nicholas Heitner, because you made a large statement about it some eighteen months or more ago. You said, I have a dreadful feeling that opera is finished. What did you mean by that?

Nicholas Hytner21:29

I'm capable of making a large statement and disagreeing with it five minutes later. Maybe I already disagree with some of the things I said ten minutes ago. I think.

Nicholas Hytner21:38

In a sense, m my statement's unarguable, that um the operatic repertoire is not being replenished.

Nicholas Hytner21:45

In the end, unless

Nicholas Hytner21:47

those who are writing operas now are able, whilst keeping their integrity intact, and that's very important, to open up and include the general public again. It will become a museum art, because the operatic repertoire is tiny.

Nicholas Hytner22:03

There's a very small number of them which are genuinely worth doing, and I think that's all I was saying.

Presenter22:08

And are you becoming um does one sense more and more disenchanted with during

Nicholas Hytner22:13

Directing opera. I find directing opera very difficult nowadays. I I find it difficult to do it.

Nicholas Hytner22:20

Without resorting to tricks I've learned.

Nicholas Hytner22:23

But I think in a sense

Nicholas Hytner22:25

That's not what we sh we should be talking about, because how I as a director do the Magic Pluto, like Pimenza di Tito or whatever, is not really going to contribute in any way to how opera is in fifty years. Somehow what's gonna ha what's gotta happen is that the people who matter, the composers, have got to find a way of applying their gifts and their talents and what has been discovered about music and what has developed in music in the last century to the mainstream again.

Presenter22:55

For a man who likes um good tunes, it's strange that you've never directed any Puccini. I mean, would you would you like to get hold your hands on some?

Nicholas Hytner23:03

I sort of think Puccini barely needs a director. Pu Puccini's always always works in that the orchestra will always move you and always tell you what's going on.

Nicholas Hytner23:14

But there is a problem about Puccini, which is that it's what's called Verismo, it's it's opera which, as far as opera's able to, aims to create real life on the stage. It's naturalistic. So casting it, you would think, would be a matter of finding, for instance, the frailest, most vulnerable, youngest Mimi you could find, and

Nicholas Hytner23:37

A fine, romantic, handsome Rodolfo.

Nicholas Hytner23:41

And I choose those two deliberately because it's not a very profound opera labo M. It's terribly moving, it's not very profound, it's about a couple of kids who fall in love. Now of course you never get those kids and it's not their fault, it's because kids can't sing it. It's almost as if until you're Pavarotti, you can't produce the voice, it's not worth doing without the voice. So in the end, go and see Pavarotti do it. I had a fantastic time watching Pavarotti play Rodolfo, and partly it was fantastic because it was faintly absurd.

Presenter24:11

Yeah.

Nicholas Hytner24:11

Next record.

Nicholas Hytner24:13

Well, this is from Don Giovanni. This is opera of a quite different order. Uh the three operas written by Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte stand alone because they are about life as I and I suspect most of the people I know have experienced it. It's not about inflated rapture. Mozart rations rapture ferociously. He can do it when he wants to. But Mozart writes about

Nicholas Hytner24:41

The humiliation of sex. He writes about the mess we all get into when we fall in love. He writes about how

Nicholas Hytner24:51

cruel and absurd men are, and specifically about how painful it is to be a woman in a man's world.

Nicholas Hytner25:00

And

Nicholas Hytner25:01

He keeps sometimes a sort of Olympian distance from it, and his music expresses

Nicholas Hytner25:07

a compassion for the idiots we make of ourselves, which in the end

Nicholas Hytner25:14

I would take beyond any music.

Nicholas Hytner25:16

This trio from Don Giovanni, and I'm the reason I chose Don Giovanni as opposed to the Magic Figura and Cozy Fantute is simply because I'm going to do it next year and so I can do some work on this island.

Nicholas Hytner25:26

This trio is about um Elvira, who is going to throw herself back into the arms of Don Giovanni, and she knows he's a liar, and she knows he's a cosmic shit, but she's still going to do it. And Mozart celebrates that, and we've all been there, and I couldn't do without this.

Speaker 425:46

Joy your Lord.

Speaker 425:50

For joy bella.

Speaker 425:57

When Lighthead was away.

Speaker 426:03

Dear Lord I might

Speaker 426:08

We are faint.

Speaker 426:12

Joy your soul.

Speaker 426:18

Yeah.

Speaker 426:22

Oh, crazy, oi crazy Oh Jesus make me drive your

Presenter26:44

Carol Vaness, William Schimmel, and Samuel Ramey singing Attacci in Giusto Core from the second act of Mozart's Don Giovanni, with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Riccardo Mutti.

Presenter26:56

You live on your own, Nicholas, in a sizable house in Primrose Hill. You're resolutely single, I read, or are you just impossible to live with?

Nicholas Hytner27:05

No, I'm um uh full of potential.

Nicholas Hytner27:08

It's sizable for me and um uh uh I you know, maybe I'll stay single, um, maybe something'll happen, but it's um I've not given up.

Presenter27:17

Someone full of permanent potential is difficult to live with, I think.

Nicholas Hytner27:21

I'm I'm terribly difficult to live with and I'm not sure what I want in any respect.

Presenter27:24

Do you do you have other life, other hobbies and interests beyond your work, or does your work just use you up completely?

Nicholas Hytner27:31

Well, I don't do Macrame or anything like that, but uh I d I I have a social like like life like everybody else. I have I have lots of friends that I like going out to dinner with and um

Nicholas Hytner27:42

I'm quite a regular guy in that respect, really.

Presenter27:45

But you're happiest, it seems to me, from what you said when when you're directing, when you're at work.

Nicholas Hytner27:51

It's it is what my life's about at the moment. I not sure that I would like that to go on forever.

Nicholas Hytner27:58

Partly because of what I said earlier, it's not in the end the job, it's just a job, the job is writing it.

Presenter28:05

Please.

Nicholas Hytner28:05

Yeah.

Presenter28:05

Can you do that any

Nicholas Hytner28:06

Danny.

Presenter28:06

Yeah.

Nicholas Hytner28:06

Uh

Nicholas Hytner28:07

Not clever enough, not talented enough.

Presenter28:10

How are you going to be alone on a desert island?

Nicholas Hytner28:12

I'd hate it, really. Uh I like being on my own very much, but I only like being on my own when I have the option not to be. And I think my idea of heaven is um to have a party going on downstairs, which I've elected not to be at.

Presenter28:26

And you're not much of a Boy Scout?

Nicholas Hytner28:29

No, no, absolutely not.

Presenter28:31

And are you an optimist? I mean, would you think that that rescue was at hand, or would you sink into a gloom?

Nicholas Hytner28:36

No, I'd assume that I'd get rescued any moment, because I think otherwise I'd go mad. Um I'd be able to do all the I guess I'd be able to do all the things that um needs must.

Nicholas Hytner28:46

Um but I'd hope that once I'd done my work on Dol Giovanni and um once I'd thought a little bit more about uh Carousel um somebody would come along and take me away.

Presenter28:59

Next record.

Nicholas Hytner29:01

This is the first scene tolude from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britton, and I think.

Nicholas Hytner29:07

This would be necessary.

Nicholas Hytner29:10

On a desert island.

Nicholas Hytner29:11

for the pessimistic moments.

Nicholas Hytner29:13

Because I think this music is about

Nicholas Hytner29:17

The sea which never changes. And

Nicholas Hytner29:21

I'd be surrounded by the sea, and the sea is an awfully good metaphor.

Nicholas Hytner29:26

To me, for the life which goes on after we're no longer here, and this music does speak very strongly to me.

Nicholas Hytner29:33

about how in the end

Nicholas Hytner29:35

There are more important things than me. Life will go on. The world will continue to turn. And, um maybe

Nicholas Hytner29:43

That we are only here to be part of a huge process, which I think ultimately I think is a beautiful process and a good one, or I'd like to think that.

Presenter30:49

Part of the first of the C interludes from Peter Grimes, played by the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and conducted by Benjamin Britton.

Presenter30:58

It said, Nicholas Heightney, that you turned down the offer of succeeding Peter Hall at Glinebourne. Are you prep prepared to confirm that?

Nicholas Hytner31:05

I've avoided, by and large, committing myself to running anything. Maybe now I should be thinking about it, you know.

Presenter31:11

The problem is that if you put down roots and you become in charge of something, you've got to administrate instead of create or spend some of your time.

Nicholas Hytner31:18

Spend some of your time. I don't know how good an administrator I'd be. I wouldn't I won't know unt until and unless I try.

Presenter31:24

But were you to put down roots which at some time you surely will, where would you like them to be?

Nicholas Hytner31:30

In this country. Um I love working in America. I absolutely adore working in New York, but it's like a drug. Um it's somehow not real.

Nicholas Hytner31:41

Uh so I guess I would like to put down roots here and I don't know.

Presenter31:47

National

Nicholas Hytner31:48

Um

Nicholas Hytner31:50

I genuinely hope that Richard Ayr goes on running it for as long as possible, because.

Nicholas Hytner31:56

He runs it brilliantly.

Nicholas Hytner31:59

I've had nothing but good experiences working there under his direction, and um whilst he's running it, I won't have to think about whether I want to apply to be his successor.

Presenter32:09

But you're very much at home there.

Nicholas Hytner32:11

Very much.

Presenter32:12

Last record.

Nicholas Hytner32:14

The last record is To Keep Me Up When I'm Down. It's uh the title track from the original Broadway cast recording of Guys and Dolls. A great musical. It's about New York. It's about

Nicholas Hytner32:29

width and being on top and

Nicholas Hytner32:33

Having a good time. It's also.

Nicholas Hytner32:35

It also features Stubby Kay, who is to me the perfect musical performer, and they genuinely.

Presenter32:40

Mm-hmm.

Nicholas Hytner32:42

come like him very rarely nowadays, and um one searches for people like Stubby Kaye. I found one actually. Clive Rowe in Carousel is like Stubby Kay. He's he's my sort of performer, and this'll this'll keep me up until the ship comes by.

Speaker 432:59

When you spot a John waiting out in the rain, chances are he's insane, as only a John could be for a Jane.

Speaker 433:08

When you meet a gent paying all kinds of rent for a flat that could flatten a Taj Mahal Call it sad, call it funny, but it's better than even money that the guy's only doing it for some time.

Presenter33:26

Stubby K and Johnny Silver singing Guys and Dolls. So if you could only take one of those eight records, Nicholas.

Nicholas Hytner33:34

With regrets for the Schubert, I would take Don Giovanni because it says everything there is to say.

Presenter33:40

You changed your mind.

Nicholas Hytner33:41

Yeah, I th I think Don Giovanni s says more even if um even if the Schubert's impossible to be behind.

Presenter33:49

What about your book?

Nicholas Hytner33:50

It's uh the non-such edition of The Works of Coleridge, uh which has his best verse, his best letters, and some of his best literary criticism. It's so pro-life. He was such an enthusiast, he was so high on the business of being alive, and I think I'd need that on an island.

Presenter34:12

And what about your luxury?

Nicholas Hytner34:14

I would take a large supply of Total Block suncream, because otherwise I'd be extremely uncomfortable.

Presenter34:20

It's a very practical choice. I'm not sure you're allowed that.

Presenter34:24

Would I be allowed a large hat?

Presenter34:27

Same thing, really. Why don't you have both? Why don't you have some total sunblock and a hat as well, and then you'll be safe until you're rescued. Please. Nicholas Heitner, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Nicholas Hytner34:38

Thank you. I've really enjoyed it.

Speaker 334:47

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