Lesley Garrett

Lesley Garrett0:00

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.

Lesley Garrett0:08

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

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My Costaway this week is an opera singer. She believes passionately that opera should be popular. It's not surprising, then, to learn that both of her grandfathers were musical entertainers.

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She won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, moved straight into performing and was snapped up by the English National Opera, for whom she sung many leading roles. She likes to have fun. On stage, she's walked on a tightrope and bared her bottom. She admires Madonna and Tom Jones as much as Pavarotti and is proud to be called Britain's darling diva. She is Leslie Garrett. In fact, you've been compared to Madonna on occasions, haven't you, Leslie? Yes, I have. I think this was mainly through a costume that I wore in a rather infamous production of Deflade-Mouse. It was the famous Basque with the conical brasier, which I must admit I really enjoyed wearing. It was such fun to see all those faces go, wow, goodness me, can this be an opera singer? But it was a take-off of Madonna. You've got the fishinette tights and the long black gloves and so on. Yes, sir. But you didn't mind being compared to her supporters. It was great fun.

Lesley Garrett1:26

But you didn't

Presenter1:31

Frankly, as long as it interests people in the music and encourages people to come and hear for themselves what we're doing and see more, perhaps more importantly, what we're doing, then I'm game for anything, frankly. That was the time you bared your bottom as well, wasn't it? Yes, only for a split second. I was staggered by the publicity that got. But how do you do it? I mean, was there a kind of rip cord on the costume? Oh, it was terribly clever. No, it was hooks and eyes all down the back, traditional way, because you don't want it coming off when you're not expecting it, do you? So it's got to be sort of fairly well anchored. And then I was sort of doing my number with the chorus girls behind me, and they were surreptitiously undoing Hooks and Eyes down the back, and then at the appropriate moment, I whirled round and tossed this garment into the wings, and there were whoops of delight, and then the girls crowded round me with a coat. And it was literally, it was a show full of amazing visual fun, and I was just another bit of visual fun. I mean, we had an electric cat, we had a real dog, we had a real horse, we had a gorilla.

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That wasn't wasn't a real gorilla. But I must just tell you, there was one amazing night when the the real dog actually went for the electric cat. And there was this frantic call went out on the tannoy that said, For God's sake, don't let the horse see the gorilla

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So that's the context that we're talking about. So me actually just sort of very briefly burying my bum for a bit of fun, you know, was perfectly in keeping with the you had a an ulterior motive for doing that though, didn't you? You wanted to deflect attention at this vital moment. That's true. Because you were supposed to be hitting a topsy. Yes, the role of Adele is peppered with topsies and flashy cadenses.

Lesley Garrett2:55

Perfectly.

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You had a

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We wanted to

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That's true, I think.

Lesley Garrett3:06

Yeah.

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And uh I'd had a very, very bad car accident just before we started in production. I very nearly pulled out. We had a head on collision on the motorway and I broke my breastbone and some ribs. And they're pretty vital bits of equipment for a singer, as I'm sure you can appreciate. And it was agony trying to sing and and and the other thing that was agony was laughing. Of course the famous song that Adele sings is the laughing song, so it was Ho, Ho, Ho Ho, Oh, that's my painkillers, you know, that kind of thing.

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And the producer wanted me, instead of one of these Top C's and the big cadenza, to do this quick flash, you see. So I thought, oh, anything that gets me out of singing another Top C, anything that saves uh saves on the agony. Let's get down to your desert islandists. What's the first one that you've chosen? Well, I'd love to hear Luciano Pavarotti singing Danza Danza Fancula. There's two reasons really for this. First of all,

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Pavrotti sounds a lot like my dad.

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My father has the most wonderful tenor voice, and it's a memory from my childhood and from my adulthood that I would really want to treasure on the island. And I think Pavarotti is the most amazing singer ever. And Danza, Danza Franchula, is a song I used to sing when I was at the Royal Academy of Music, so there's lots of reasons for picking this.

Lesley Garrett4:24

Sorry but

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J-da-da ta-da so

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Sentil vajarum delauras que el sosa que marlalvore collandidos on tola vididos vo.

Lesley Garrett5:00

Ah

Speaker 35:02

Sensa for Zakeni Da Danza, Danza Danza, Panchula Gentile, Manchula Gentile, Haldio Tantare, Aldio Tanta, Danza Danza

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Luciano Pavarotti singing Danza Danza Fancula by Durante, with the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Antonio Tonini. Have you ever sung with Pavarotti? Oh, no, but wouldn't I? I'd just love to. I wouldn't mind just turning the pages for him. I mean

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He's just wonderful. He has this amazing facility to anchor. This is well, I think this is what he's saying. He anchors his voice. I mean, you've already got to look at that fantastic throat and the way that the muscles sort of anchor right into the middle of his chest. And you get this wonderful, I think it's called apocciare, which is, I think, Italian for leaning on the sound, on the chest. Ah, ha! I can't do it like, you know, like he can, like anybody. Just that way it anchors straight down into the middle of his body. It's just the sexiest thing. I just, oh, love it, love it. But your dad from Doncaster can do it as well. Yes, my dad can do it, isn't that funny? And he just kind of woke up being able to do it. He didn't have to learn. So it's funny, isn't it? That's the amazing thing about singing. It's such an amalgamation of different things. It's not just singing, that's what I think maybe people don't realise. It's a lot to do with needing to perform, needing to get out there and really, you know, sell the music. That's something that's very much in you, isn't it? But being a kind of showman as much as caring about the music and wanting to perform it. It's in your family root, isn't it? The music hall, I said your father sang in. What was he? Arthur Garrett and the Blackout Boys? Well, it's funny. Both my grandfathers were in completely contrasting ways in music halls, if you like. My granddad Garrett was in working men's clubs all his life. He played in a band, Arthur Garrett and the Blackout Boys. From that side of the family, I think I've inherited this need to entertain that we've been talking about.

Lesley Garrett6:41

Yeah.

Presenter6:58

which I I think is as vital as as the classical side. But I was incredibly lucky that I inherited the classical side as well, because on my mum's side, on the wall side, um, I there's a great love of the classics. And my grandfather was a very fine classical pianist who had a a

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albeit very short classical career. He couldn't actually bear the touring and he ended up playing for Silent Movies and in a a small orchestra in Sheffield. But he taught you to play? He taught all of us. As soon as I could read

Lesley Garrett7:25

He told you to

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Anything. I could read music. And what sort of songs did you play and sing round the piano when you were little? Oh, it was a fantastic mixture. Um, everything from opera.

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which we didn't actually recognize as opera. They were just good tunes through music hall numbers, war songs, folk music. You'd have in there Ness undorma as well as Pack Up Your Troubles, would you? Absolutely that. Absolutely that. I've very vivid memories of

Lesley Garrett7:50

Absolutely that.

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My grandfather's clock was too big for the shelf, cl very closely followed by One Fine Day, Puccini's One Fine Day. Uh and it was just music, it was just wonderful music. And what about you performing? I mean, did you did you practise even then? Did you intend to be on the stage? I was a dreadful, dreadful show off. I was a really terribly precocious child.

Lesley Garrett8:04

And what are

Presenter8:13

I had two younger sisters and I used to make them do terrible things. I used to stand on the window ledge and and make them draw the curtains back to reveal me and shine torches at me and and things like that. And and I just used to put little shows on all the time and any excuse, any excuse to sing and show off and lark around and and my whole family, particularly my father, you know, we were all the same.

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Record number two. Oh, the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. Again, this is just part of my heritage really. I used to go and hear Grimethor in our schools, in our school halls. I used to come and play. And they played a fantastic range of music, and it was just it was good music. And I've picked uh some Wagner. Again, there's a special reason for that. I have a bit of trouble with Wagner, I have to confess. It's long.

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I'd like to see Wagner personally in sort of episodes, a bit like East Enders. I think I could get my head round it then. And I th I thought if I had if I had the grind for Colliery Band playing Wagner, there was a chance I'd, you know, I'd I'd grow to appreciate it.

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Grimethorpe Colliery Band playing Procession to the Minster from Wagner's Loewengrin.

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So was your singing and and your ideas about performing, was that helped at school? Did they? Oh, enormously. My school were amazing because they really fostered what they could see was an an ability. Having said that, they fostered that ability in a lot of the children at my school. It was a wonderful school. It was an ordinary grammar school and we had three orchestras, we had choirs, we had French and German song classes in the lunch breaks taken by the language teachers, we had comp music competitions.

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We put on shows every term. Were you always the lead in those? Not always. If I was doing exams, they used to make me take a smaller part, but they couldn't keep me off the stage. Which what sort of shows did you do? I did My Fair Lady, took the lead in that. That was my high point.

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And we did it was a fantastic diverse mixture. That's the most important thing almost. We did things like The Little Sweep of Britain and Noah's Flood of Britain, mixed up with Joseph and his Amazing Technical A Dreamcoat. But nevertheless, I can understand that when you actually finally said, both at home and at school, I want to be an opera singer, not just a singer, not just on the stage, I want to be an opera singer, it must have been something of a shock to them. I think it was a a little bit.

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But I think they'd begun to realise that I was going to have to try it and just to see if I could do it or or really die in the attempt. But you wanted a classical training? Yes, I'd been having peripatetic singing lessons, which I'm sure is not available anymore. I'm sure most of this isn't available anymore, which saddens me more than I can say. I'd been spending all my pocket money.

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This is a tearjoker. Every Saturday I used to catch three different buses. It used to take me two and a half hours. Used to go to Waffon-Dern.

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to have a half an hour's lesson with a peripatetic singing teacher in the school there with thirteen other fourteen other people.

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It was that, combined with the opportunities I had at school, that just made me realise, my God, I could actually do this. And it was my school I asked first. I said to I remember dear old Mike Clark and Leslie Wood, who were the producer and music director of the shows we used to do, I said, Do you think I could actually do this? Because I live for four o'clock.

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You know, I actually don't think I want to do all these science A levels, because I wasn't merely planning to go off and be a scientist.

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And they said, Well, we were waiting for you to come and say this to us, and yes, we think you should. And I'd been taking music as well, but sort of on the side, really. I had a wonderfully enlightened headmistress who

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Uh

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When I said to her, Do you think I could actually drop chemistry and biology and do music in two terms? This is music A level. And she said, Yes, of course you can, go away and do it. And that's how it happened. But your father had proved, hadn't he, that if you want something badly enough professionally, you can get it. My dad had been a second-class signalman on the railways and he decided he wanted to be a headmaster. So he took a correspondence course.

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I've got vivid memories of him going off on his motorbike with an enormous reel-to-reel tape recorder on his back with his correspondence course on it, all taped to play in the signal box while he was remembering to pull the lever for the up train or whatever it was. And he passed his O levels and A levels there and went on to college and ended up becoming a headmaster. And my mum did the same thing and became head of music in a local school. So it seemed to me not an unreasonable thing at all that I

Lesley Garrett13:15

Play in the signal.

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From very humble origins, should be able to become an opera singer. Why not? And indeed, you won a scholarship to the Royal Academy. Let's have your third record there. This is Anne, Anne Murray.

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singing Ombre my fou from Handel's Xerxes. I've performed Handel twice with Anne, uh the Xerxes you're about to hear, and also Ariadante, which we've just done at the Coliseum.

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And I think that performers are are almost as important to me as the music. The quality of the performance i is everything. And and she's she's just

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Unsurpassable to me. I love Handel. I just think Handel's wonderful. So it's got to be this.

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Health be saved.

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I have my saved.

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Hilly Lord.

Speaker 314:56

Yeah.

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Anne Murray, singing the aria Ombre my foon, under thy shade, from Handel Xerxes, with the orchestra of the English National Opera, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerers. You did the last night of the proms with Anne, didn't you? That's right. Oh, my goodness, that was a night

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I was so scared. I have never been so frightened in my life. I walked out there and I saw this heaving mass of steaming summer people and I just thought, Oh dear, why don't they stick to playing tennis in here?

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It was just so terrifying. And then I got a couple of wolf whistles because I was wearing a bit of a frock.

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And I thought, no, this is just a building site. Just another one, I think. Just another building site. I'll be all right. This is fine. And then we just have a nice party and it was great fun.

Lesley Garrett15:47

Just

Lesley Garrett15:48

Right.

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So we got you to the Royal Academy, studying hard, but short of money, despite the scholarship, at which point you discovered a nice little earner in Hampstead Garden suburb.

Lesley Garrett15:59

The bottom side.

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Hampstead Garden Suburbs were very good to me, the Hampstead Garden Suburbs Institute, where I s I slaved for many a hot afternoon. Doing what?

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I got a wonderful cushy job. I posed nude for a life drawing class and sculpture class for for years, basically. I would trip up there on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, strip off to the buff, plonk myself on the settee and sit there memorizing songs for my singing my song class the next day. And how much do you get? I think it was about three quid an hour.

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Pretty good in those days, I might tell you. And who were they? Who were they, the artists? Oh, they were local Hampstead garden people. So there were lots of pictures of the nude Leslie Garrett in Garrett in Hamstead Garden. Oh, in garretts. There were more sculptures, actually. I think I'm to be found with water coming out of my mouth rather than song in various gardens up there still, to be honest.

Lesley Garrett16:31

And who were they?

Lesley Garrett16:41

There were more garretts.

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But you were you were very successful at the Royal Academy. You won the Catherine Ferrier Memorial Prize and you were quickly offered work all round the country. It it really was a very charmed life up until that point. I was very lucky. I was very fortunate. I I was having a wonderful time of my life here. Things started to go wrong, which we'll talk about in a second, but I think we should have your next record.

Lesley Garrett17:03

How was that?

Lesley Garrett17:07

But then

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Well, this is Gloria Gaynor. I will survive. It was a hit for her at the time.

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I I heard it on the radio a lot and then it meant so much to me. I I got it for myself and played it whenever I needed to and I needed to a lot. I had a real crash. I had a very nasty kidney illness. And we discovered

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when I ended up in hospital, very ill, that my right kidney is about nine inches too low, and in the front it's just sort of underneath my appendix.

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We thought I'd got appendicitis and they were about to whip it out and then we discovered it wasn't that, it was this this kidney giving me jip.

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And I lost my voice through that for a long time, for about ten months, and it was a very frightening time. And this record kept me going.

Speaker 317:59

To think I lay down and die, oh no, not I. I will survive. Oh, as long as I know how to love, I know I feel like I've got all my life to live, and I've got all my love to give. And I'll survive, I will survive. Hey, hey.

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Gloria Gaynor and I Will Survive. That was nineteen eighty two, eighty three, and you were very ill, Leslie Garrett. Did you think you perhaps wouldn't be able ever to sing again? Yes, I did. And that's never left me, to be honest. That

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Appalling fear.

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is still in a little very secret place.

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And I think that's a good thing, because that com that informs my singing. It was a thing I took so completely for granted, and suddenly I couldn't do it. I it was the strangest thing I could not remember how to do it.

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I opened my mouth and nothing came out. And there was nothing wrong with me.

Lesley Garrett18:56

As the There's nothing.

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Terrible timing as well, really, because you've just been offered um position with the and Lord Harwood had just found me in Hull on a wet weekend in Hull.

Lesley Garrett19:01

Go

Lesley Garrett19:03

And a little bit.

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I've been head hunted by my hero, Lord Harward.

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Yes, I'd been doing The Marriage of Figaro with Opera North, and Lord Harwood had said that I should come and audition for the ENO, and I was so thrilled.

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And then at the end of that run, it was a very gruelling tour.

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I went down with this terrible pain and it was terrible timing because I was very excited about the possibility of working for

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For E and O

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And that all had to be completely shelved.

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I've puzzled long and hard over why I should have lost my voice.

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Singing is a terrifically physical activity.

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If your body lets you down, I think that's instantly noticeable in the voice. It translates or emotionally come to that, it translates immediately into the into the larynx, into the voice. But there was something else happening to you emotionally as well, wasn't there? Your marriage was broken down. Yes, my first marriage had broken down and that upset me enormously. I was very sad about that.

Lesley Garrett19:59

Yes, my first

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Was that because you you'd spent too much time working on the professional side of your life that in the end your marriage had to give? I was far too young and inexperienced.

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and immature to to know how to make the two things coexist, and all I knew was I belonged on the stage.

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And I felt terrible about making that choice. I felt desperately guilty.

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And I think I always will. But the stress of that, coupled with this illness,

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I think was enough just to make me completely lose my voice. And I I just couldn't find that sense of how to do it. And the thing that was terrible was

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That I lost the opportunity to express myself. I lost my joy. I just hadn't there was no happiness in my life if I couldn't sing. I thought I would go mad. I can't tell you what a terrible time it was. Was that the point at which you got a letter in the post one morning with some Yorkshire grid? Oh, yes. Oh, that was my dear, dear mum. I got this letter in the post and I opened it and all these stones fell on my feet.

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And it was my mum, and there was a letter in it, and she said, I thought you needed some Yorkshire grit, so I've sent you some.

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Spit on your hands and take a fresh hold, love you'll be all right.

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Wonderful, it did the trick. It did actually. We got through. Extraordinary.

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Oh, well, things picked up, as they do, in all the best stories.

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Um while I was trying to get back on my feet, Welsh National Opera were putting on.

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uh a new production of Smettener's The Bartered Bride. And they've got this wonderful East German, what was then East Germany, uh producer called Rudolf Nelter, who was desperately keen to have a very realistic production.

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And there's a character in The Barter Brian called Esmeralda the Wire Walker, and this East German chap said, I would like a singer who can walk the tightrope. You must have singer who can walk the tightrope.

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So Welsh National Opera thought, Oh my goodness, what idiot singer can we think of who'll do that? And then they thought, Aha, Leslie Garrett. She's game for a physical challenge, so with her. So they rang me up and said, you know, would you like to to learn to walk the tightrope? So I thought, well

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This sounded like a very good opportunity to get my physical confidence back, and it was the best thing I could have done.

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Because it's all about centering yourself. It's all about finding your centre and having the confidence to step out. So I did this. I learnt to water tightrope in a garage in Twickenham with a wonderful family called the Laurentis Brenda Brenda Laurenti and a mum and dad.

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And it was the best time I think I've ever had. It was great. And therefore I would like to have the Dance of the Comedians from Smettener's Barter Bride because this was the music that was played while I was trying not to fall off.

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The Dance of the Comedians from Smettener's Bartered Bride, played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Simon. You've had, Leslie, eight terrific years with ENO. We've played all sorts of roles. I mean, from Yum Yum in the Mikado to Atalanta in Xerxes. Do you have favourites, or do you enjoy simply showing off, I suppose, in the best kind of way? Showing your versatility. I think the roles I've enjoyed most have been the ones that have used me physically the most. For instance, the cunning little Vixen, when you just have to run around the whole time and scratch yourself a lot and sort of sniff under bushes and various other animals and still sing beautifully. And in the challenge of always being able to sing beautifully, as well as do all this other stuff. And not compromising the music. Never, ever, ever, ever compromising the music. I believe.

Lesley Garrett24:27

Yeah.

Speaker 324:28

Yeah.

Lesley Garrett24:28

Uh

Presenter24:32

absolutely passionately that it's possible to do that and that we must because that's what the audience deserves. They they are being shortchanged if they get anything less. And so they've dressed you up as Madonna. They've also dressed you up as a man, haven't they? And they've given pebble glasses and Oh, that was wonderfully exciting. This was in a a very Very unusual production by David by David Oldham, who has just done the Aridante I've been in. I was playing the part of Oscar, the page, in A Masked Ball by Verdi. I had a serge suit, man's suit. I had a receding hairline, nasty little red wig with a nasty little goatey beard, pebble glasses, a hunch, a limp. I chain-smoked through the entire opera. And despite all this, I still had to make the best sound I possibly could. I think that was probably my greatest challenge. The audience got cross at one point, didn't they? Because he, she, you smoked so much. Oh, that's right. I uh.

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I had one entrance from one of the uh stage boxes, and I had to sit in the box for five or ten minutes while the tenant did his big aria and and smoke.

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and I couldn't get my lighter to to light, to to light up my cigarette. And there were a a little group of businessmen in the box next to me.

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and with several bottles of wine, having rather a good time. We're quite slack at the at the ano, you know. And uh one of them leaned across and said, He said, Can I give you a light?

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It's a great big cigarette lighter. So I said, thank you very much, thank you very much. And he started up a conversation. Do you come here often?

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And then another woman a few rows further on said, I think there's someone smoking. I thought, oh dear, I knew this was a bad idea. Anyway, I hopped on stage and did my next bit, so.

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But obviously, Leslie, from everything you say, I mean, you care very much that opera should be popular, but there are those people, as you know, the opera buffs, who would say that there's a point at which

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You make it more than accessible, you actually vulgarise opera.

Speaker 426:33

Two.

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Do you take that point at all?

Presenter26:36

Yes, I do take that point. I listen very carefully to what they have to say. I think for me the guideline always is is honesty. If I feel the characterisation that I'm attempting

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And the style of the piece that I'm in has a truth about it and has.

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a compatibility with the music. However difficult that might be to initially appreciate, then it will work. Anything less is a gimmick, and I think that's appalling.

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Nothing that I've been in, I would hasten to say, I feel, is worthy of that description.

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And I think it's something we've got to watch very carefully. But at the end of the day, we are in a visual era. We are competing with television, with film, with video. We have got to make this an interesting visual spectacle. It was always designed to be an interesting visual spectacle. Goodness me, w you know, they had elephants in Aida long before E and O was on the scene.

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So I feel we're being faithful to what the composers wanted when we try and make the thing as accessible visually as possible.

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Oh, this is wonderful.

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This is Broadway Baby, sung by Elaine Stritch. It's a remarkable song and it can be sung in lots of different ways, but she sings it like nobody else.

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I'm just a broadway baby.

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Walking off my tired feet

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Pound and Forty Second Street

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To be in a show.

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Uh

Speaker 428:19

Wrong way, baby.

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Broadway Baby, sung by Elaine Stritch. What role do you see yourself playing that you haven't tackled so far? I'd love a crack at Mimi. What about Traviata? Oh, I'd love to do that one day. I would. I think that's a year or two away.

Lesley Garrett28:34

But Travilla

Presenter28:38

But I that chari again, it's the characters you know too that grab me first. It really is.

Presenter28:43

Uh Mano, Massenet's Mano would be another one I'd love to uh Tatiana Nugion Jegin. Oh, that letter scene. In fancy singing for twelve minutes about writ about writing to your lover. Isn't that a wonderful opportunity to to develop an idea?

Presenter28:55

Oh, yes, I'm looking to to do that, but I still I still want to do the fun fun stuff as well. And you've been married now for about eighteen months and um your husband's a great support in all of this, is he? Oh, yes, yes. He's a

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an enormous opera lover, quite independently. He discovered opera when he discovered London, when he came as a stud as a medical student. He just happened to walk by

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Covent garden and thought, ooh, this is a nice building. I wonder what this is all about. I've got a fifty P ticket and heard, of all things, Domingo making his debut that very night. So he discovered. I was hooked from then on. Yes, that's right. And then he discovered you in in a dressing room somewhere.

Lesley Garrett29:30

Yes, that's right.

Lesley Garrett29:33

BAAP

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Oh, this was wonderful. Yes, I was uh

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I was kind of uh a career girl. I'd uh given up on men completely, I have to say. I decided that I didn't have the talent in that direction.

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And very, very dear friends of mine.

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Imogen Cooper, the pianist, and her husband John Batten decided that this just wasn't good enough and

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They said, We're bringing a friend of ours to see you in The Love for Three Oranges, which I was performing at that time at the Coliseum.

Presenter30:02

And we're going to take you out for supper afterwards and he's wonderful and you're going to really like him. I said, Yeah, really? They said, Yes, he loves opera and I said, Get lost There's no way I'm going on a blind date at my age. They didn't work when I was a teenager, they're not going to work now.

Presenter30:18

And they were very upset. And then they came back the day before this particular evening and they said, Well, the gorgeous chap can't come. Our boring old doctor's got to come instead. So please come out for supper, otherwise nobody's going to make any conversation. So I said, Oh, go on then.

Presenter30:31

And they brought this chap round, and of course it was the same bloke, and I'd fallen for this cock and bull story, and quite honestly, I know it sounds mills and boony, but our eyes met across a crowded dressing room,

Presenter30:41

I had my hair in pinkles and my face covered in cold cream, and we just knew

Presenter30:45

That that was it. We just recognized each other instantly. It was just oh.

Presenter30:50

Hello Well, there you are It was really meeting Mr Wright. And um he took me out for lunch and I moved in. You know, I think carefully about these things and that was it. And we've been happily married now ever since. And it's just every day is more blissful than the previous one.

Presenter31:09

Should we have your next record?

Presenter31:11

For that reason.

Presenter31:13

Partly, I've chosen Imogen Cooper playing part of Schubert's sonata in B flat major, the andante movement.

Presenter31:22

Apart from the nostalgia involved, I do think Imogen is one of the best pianists in this country, and I don't think anybody plays Schubert quite as well as she does. And my mum is a very, very fine pianist, and for all those reasons, I couldn't be on my island without Immo playing Schubert.

Presenter32:41

Imogen Cooper playing part of Schubert's sonata in B flat major.

Presenter32:45

You're not the sort of person who's going to be at all happy alone on an island. I'm going to hate it. I was going to say, is is there a phone there? I mean, I don't suppose there's a phone up a palm tree, is there no?

Lesley Garrett32:52

This is a fun process.

Presenter32:54

I'm gonna go mad not be able to talk to anybody.

Lesley Garrett32:54

Yeah.

Speaker 332:54

I'm good.

Presenter32:57

Tell me about your last record, because that would spark a very special memory. Oh dear, this is going to make me cry.

Speaker 333:00

No

Presenter33:03

I would really love to have Chris Czezinski singing A Boy Like You from Kurt Weil's street scene from the from the ENO production. This is pure memories and nostalgia because I gave birth to my son Jeremy on New Year's Day this year after a riotous New Year's Eve party, I have to confess, who came a fortnight early.

Presenter33:24

After copious quantities of champagne and tiramisu and party games with all my chums at Eano, I woke up at three in the morning with what I thought was indigestion and turned out to be a baby.

Presenter33:34

There you are, life's like that. And he was born in the evening of New Year's Day.

Presenter33:40

At exactly the same time as I was actually on BBC television.

Presenter33:44

In obviously a pre-recorded production of this very opera that I'd done earlier in the year at Eno.

Presenter33:51

And, to cut a long story short, he got into a bit of trouble, my little love.

Presenter33:55

And I had to have a a quick Caesarean at

Presenter33:58

twenty to nine that night. And about five minutes beforehand the opera street scene had had finished, uh the curtain came down on this and um Jeremy, my little boy, was was born and was fine. And when we'd all calmed down, my husband said, Trust you to be taking curtain calls in two different theatres at the same time.

Presenter34:20

But uh this number, a boy like you is all about a mother's love for her son.

Presenter34:27

You want to grow up to be a flying.

Speaker 334:28

Good man.

Speaker 334:30

Everybody likes and has respect for.

Speaker 334:33

Someone is gonna be so handsome Someone's gonna make me proud

Speaker 334:48

But he's gonna be so

Speaker 334:53

He is hang out from roots.

Speaker 334:58

Such a man the arm of Ten Lord.

Speaker 335:08

And I walk down the avenue

Speaker 335:15

But he will always be my son.

Presenter35:21

Christine Chazinski singing A Boy Like You from Court Val's street scene. So this is the uh the testing time. Which one of the eight, Leslie, would you have to keep? I think I'd have to take Elaine. I think I'd have to take Broadway Baby because she just makes me laugh so much.

Presenter35:36

I just love it. That's terrible, isn't it? What about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare? I think I'd like a photograph album with all my family, all my friends, and my lots and lots of pictures of my Jeremy in it, just to look at and cry over. Because there's plenty to read, goodness me, with all of Shakespeare and the Bible and everything. And what about the luxury? Now this is hard. But in the end, I've plumped for a tightrope. I thought I could sling it between two trees and I could practice my tightrope walking, because I got quite good, you know. They said that if I ever gave up singing, they'd take me on in the circus. They did, they seriously did. Brenda said I could come and do a double act with her. And it would be good, because I could use a palm leaf as a fan, you see, because you do it with a with a fan, this particular sort of wire walking I do. So I thought I've got all the gear there with the palm trees and everything, and if I fell off, I wouldn't hurt myself on the sand.

Presenter36:22

It wouldn't, you know, I'd just dent it a bit. So that's what I'd like to take, please, Sue.

Presenter36:26

Well, you can certainly have it, Lister Carrot. Thank you very much indeed for letting us see your desert island discs. My pleasure, great fun.

Lesley Garrett36:40

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