Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Sue Lawley
Opera singer known as Opera's Forgotten Voice, a soprano rediscovered via newly released recordings.
Eight records
Tatiana's Letter Scene (from Eugene Onegin)
Well, I think Tatiana for me, I suppose, was always an um ambitious thing because she is the epitome of the Russian maiden of that class. She's the heroine of Eugena Negin, and somehow I I think in a way possibly my character was similar to hers.
Prelude in D-flat major, Op. 28, No. 15, 'Raindrop'
Well, my mother was a very, very brilliant amateur pianist, very brilliant, and she was specifically good in Chopin, so I was sort of brought up on it. And whenever I hear Chopins, it becomes three dimensional. So I'd like to have that.
Trepak (from Songs and Dances of Death)
Fra Leppen has always been. sort of a background to my childhood. I mean, he was a godlike figure, and so I would have to have him on the island, and so I've chosen Mussolfski's Tripa.
When I was doing ENSA there was a a wonderful young man called Timothy Lloyd. He was wonderfully good looking. He was eighteen, the most fascinating sense of humour, and he made his own puppets... and somehow Frances Day's singing I la la la love you so, and then I need you so became our song.
Yaroslavna's Lament (from Prince Igor)
I sang the two Yaroslavna arias As an audition piece for the Liceo Barcelona, I just Sang them on tour tape and they were sent there and I got the job.
Rosa Pottsell was always a tremendous inspiration to me because I think our voices were very, very similar and she was always there for me as an example. of beautiful singing.
I did that as a one off just to hear what my voice sounded like when I was in my late twenties, and I never ever dreamt that it would be of such importance on a C D.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral'Favourite
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler
Because to me it's always been tremendously elemental and I feel it on an island. When one is at the mercy of the elements and surrounded by them, this would be something apt and it's beautifully aligned.
The keepsakes
The book
I would love an im imaginative cookery book that would make one feel as if one had had a good meal.
The luxury
My luxury would be some form of animal food which would tame the little four legged ones and the birds. … I am mad about animals and I couldn't live without animals.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Why was this voice, which is obviously one of the greats, ignored?
Well, bad management, I think, A, and lack of perception, I think from the point of view of agents and uh the establishment.
Presenter asks
How close were you to starving [after the Russian Revolution]?
pretty close. I mean, you know, there were times when we ate potato peels in water and rotten fish bones would be for Sunday.
Presenter asks
Did you know fear as a child?
I think as long as my mother was with me I knew no fear. It's very strange, but to me she was Well, she was my security.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Kyra Vayne
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. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My castaway this week is an opera singer. You may never have heard of her. She's Opera's Forgotten Voice, which today, thanks to the release of some previously unknown recordings, has reached a large new audience of admirers. Now eighty, she was born in Russia just before the Revolution. She's known poverty and hardship as well as some success. She's sung with Gili, Gobby, and Bergonzi, and been abandoned by lovers and managers alike. But her voice has stayed with her. How is it possible, asked one reviewer after her first C D was recently released, that such a singer has not come down as one of the century's most celebrated sopranos? She is Kira Vane.
Presenter
The reception of these recordings has been ecstatic, Kira. Why isn't she a superstar? another critic asks. It must be a very bittersweet experience for you. It is, totally. Can you accept it? Uh it's been difficult, very, very difficult, but I have accepted it now. I'm I'm fine now. I'm enjoying it. But it's been quite an emotional business. Oh, tremendous, tremendous. I mean, when the C D the the project
Presenter
started. I was panic stricken and I begged.
Presenter
The powers that be not to do it, because I thought I would be ridiculed, I thought my voice would be torn to shreds.
Presenter
and the C D's would gather dust.
Presenter
And then one by one the reviews came and they were all unanimous and I spent my time having hysterics.
Presenter
But what they can't understand, the question that keeps being asked is why was this voice, which is obviously one of the greats, another one has said,
Presenter
Why was it ignored? Why was it never recorded? What's the answer to that question?
Presenter
Well, bad management, I think, A, and lack of perception, I think from the point of view of agents and uh the establishment. It's interesting because some of the experts who are now wondering why you weren't recognized before have said that perhaps it it was not ineffective management, that it was you who perhaps lacked the drive and the ambition to get there.
Presenter
It is possible I was not an aggressive person. It is totally not in my nature to ever ask for favour.
Presenter
Because to me that is being beholden, and I just cannot be beholden. So therefore what happened was that these recordings, some of which were made I think non-professionally, weren't they? Oh yes, they were all they were all either taped from the BBC or from Scandinavia where I sang, or some of them I did, like the Imfrueling by Schubert, I did just curiosity to hear my voice. So that those recordings have spent the last thirty years underneath your bed in Schippettbusch? Literally.
Presenter
Well, you worked in in a in a branch of Barclays Bank? Well, I've worked in many, many places. I also worked for the BBC as a secretary.
Presenter
So you definitely want to take one or two of these recordings of yours to your desert island, I'm sure. Tell me about the first one. The Vatiana.
Presenter
Well, I think Tatiana for me, I suppose, was always an um ambitious thing because she is the epitome of the Russian maiden of that class. She's the heroine of Eugena Negin, and somehow I I think in a way possibly my character was similar to hers.
Kyra Vayne
She's she's the head
Kyra Vayne
She's the head shade only again.
Speaker 2
For yet the fear of God.
Speaker 2
Oh the people don't know
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
Part of Tatiana's letter scene from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onyegen, sung by my castaway Kira Vane. You did rise, obviously, very high in your profession. You shared the limelight, as I mentioned, in your time, with with the likes of Gobby and Gilly and Taliviani.
Presenter
Some of them were not great sharers, by all accounts. One of them undid the back of your dress, apparently. Yeah, that happened to me twice, one tenor and one baritone. Tigliavini, in our love scene at the in the third act, he sort of threw me over his knee. This is Tosca. Tosca, and I had a cape over it, and he just simply went behind my cape and just undid all my hooks and eyes.
Presenter
right down to my knees, literally, and when I had to throw the cloak at Spoleto the villain before I'd jump into the
Presenter
river, I was more or less new. I had to clutch the back of my dress.
Presenter
But why did he do it would d it surely destroyed the performance?
Presenter
No, because I camouflaged it, but pure jealousy, because to them they are the only thing.
Presenter
What about Gobby, Tito Gobby? He apparently got very rough with you. He was playing Scarpio, wasn't he? Gobby. didn't want to rehearse at all. I mean, they didn't rehearse. So he assumed that as I was a beginner, he'd better sort of uh hypnotize me into doing what he wanted to do, so that everything I had studied with various directors and people like Maria Kuznitsova just went for Burton, because he literally forced me, standing with his back to the audience, forced me hypnotically to get up, to sit down, to go left, to go right. And then just before my aria, when he throws himself at me, I mean, he nearly asphyxiated me and I swallowed.
Presenter
an ostrich feather which was a resplendent colour on my dress and uh
Presenter
That was it. I couldn't start because there is no overture to the aria, it just sort of goes peep
Kyra Vayne
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
And you sing.
Presenter
And I just couldn't. The feather was right across my larynx. After two or three notes it sort of worked itself clear. But I mean, as far as the audience was concerned, and Webster who was in the audience, and the media, it was stage Frank. Who was Webster?
Presenter
Webster was head of Coffengarden.
Presenter
So you didn't get invited to come to the city.
Kyra Vayne
So I didn't get
Presenter
invited to Covent Gardens. But you're saying the motive for all of this w was jealousy that Well, it must be jealousy. What else can it be? I mean, instead of helping somebody who was singing a debut,
Presenter
As I would and as I did. They wanted to destroy. So the Knight of the Feather was your debut, as Toska wasn't. That's right, that was my debut.
Speaker 2
So the night
Kyra Vayne
But
Presenter
So it was really a a devastating moment in your life. Oh, it was shattering, absolutely shattering. And our PR, who should have told the media, didn't. But the next morning the headlines were Rigoletta Tenor in Covent Garden swallows his moustache. And that was Walter Mitchley, who that same night had swallowed his moustache. He got the headlines, and I got the slating criticisms.
Presenter
Tell me about your second record. My second record.
Presenter
Well, my mother was a very, very brilliant amateur pianist, very brilliant, and she was specifically good in Chopin, so I was sort of brought up on it. And whenever I hear Chopins, it becomes three dimensional. So I'd like to have that.
Presenter
Part of Chopin's prelude in D-flat, Op. 28, Raindrop, played by Arto Rubinstein, and memories, Kiera Vane, of your mother, from whom you obviously inherit your musical talent. She was a piano teacher whose work saved you from starvation for some years, didn't it? Well, she wasn't a teacher as such. She became a teacher because that was her only way of earning the odd crust. But how close were you to starving?
Presenter
pretty close. I mean, you know, there were times when we
Presenter
ate potato peels in water and rotten fish bones would be for Sunday. This was just after the Revolution. This was after the Revolution. Because you were born just before it was. I was born in sixteen, eighteen months before the Revolution.
Speaker 2
I wasn't morning
Presenter
And you were really quite a a well off family, weren't you, in St. Petersburg? We came from a good background, yes. So what happened? Why did you end up eating potato peelings?
Presenter
Because we had run away from Saint Petersburg.
Presenter
Because that was where the revolution was taking part, so to speak.
Presenter
We
Presenter
squatted all the way down to the Black Sea.
Presenter
Had you taken any of your possessions with you? The only possession that we took, and I shall never know why, was a wonderful full length caracoule coat of my mother's black caracoule, which in the end she bartered for a reel of white cotton.
Presenter
because everything was in rags and cotton was at its premium.
Presenter
And you would have been very, very tiny. How aware were you of what was going on?
Presenter
I wasn't tremendously aware, except that there was a tremendous tension, and one knew that one was in the middle of something that could blow up at any moment. I mean
Presenter
One had enemies in front, behind and around one. Because the family went back to St. Petersburg, didn't it? It did, but after quite a time my father went back first to try and find work, and we stayed outside Moscow, and that was where we ate very, very badly.
Presenter
And then eventually um back to St. Petersburg. Did you know fear as a child? Did you understand? I think as long as my mother was with me I knew no fear. It's very strange, but to me she was
Presenter
Well, she was my security. That was why when she went to her lessons it was shattering for me, because I would be left waiting for her to come back, and I would just stand on one spot waiting for her.
Presenter
So you would have been during all of this time three, four, five, six. That's right. I returned back to St. Petersburg well, to Leningrad when I was about five, five and a half. And then when I was eight we came to England. And the family arrived in London, literally, in the clothes we stood. In the clothes we stood in, absolutely. My father did come to a job because as a young man he had worked for a private bank.
Presenter
in the city, and so uh very fortunately they accepted him again.
Presenter
And he had a very good job, but in nineteen twenty nine with a American crash,
Presenter
The bank went uh bankrupt and that was it.
Presenter
But you personally presumably could speak not a word of English. When I came, I didn't speak a word. Aged eight.
Presenter
Tell me about record number three.
Kyra Vayne
True bottom
Presenter
Record number three.
Presenter
Fra Leppen has always been.
Presenter
sort of a background to my childhood. I mean, he was a godlike figure, and so I would have to have him on the island, and so I've chosen Mussolfski's Tripa.
Speaker 3
Jam Water.
Speaker 3
Mosheka Simerjavni Moya Plaska
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Shalyapin singing Muzorgsky's Trepak No. One of Songs and Dances of Death.
Presenter
At what point, Kieravan, were you aware that you had an exceptional voice?
Presenter
I suppose around about twelve is fourteen.
Presenter
I just used to hum and sing Russian folk songs. But did you start having lessons?
Presenter
I started when I was about eighteen.
Presenter
And who paid?
Presenter
My father paid until I was nineteen and then told me I was on my own, and I paid.
Presenter
From then onwards, don't ask me how I have never understood. I read that you paid with your wages from some rather shady reviews, you appear.
Presenter
Well, my very, very first show was with a with a man called Ernie Lottinger, who was a brilliant comic, but uh the lower echelon, I would say. So what went on in these shows then? Well, we had Phyllis Dixie, if you remember her at all. She was the first stripper. She was a very pristine looking, gorgeous woman, but she very genteelly used to strip.
Presenter
Um I was a showgirl, I mean
Presenter
What does what did that mean? What did it entail?
Presenter
But you didn't take your clothes off. Oh, don't you?
Kyra Vayne
Three
Presenter
But apparently at some point you you won a a golden voice competition in Clapham. When I was eighteen I the the very, very first vocal competition I think ever.
Presenter
was born in England.
Presenter
And I applied.
Presenter
won all the heats until I reached the heights of Clapham and I became the Golden Voice girl of Clapham. And then a a gentleman from Chapels Publishing rang me and said, Did I want to win the prize? And I thought, well, yes, rather nice. So he said, Would I have lunch with him? And of course one realized
Kyra Vayne
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
what that really meant and my father simply forbade me to go. But obviously that was the way things worked even then. What that was the way people got on? Well, I they would have or they obviously heard my potential. They would have made the heats. I mean they would have somehow contrived them. But you were obviously very vulnerable. You were a beautiful young foreigner and um there were men out there who were eager to take advantage of you. And women.
Presenter
Really?
Presenter
Oh, yeah. Oh, dear.
Presenter
In what way?
Presenter
Well, I mean, there were ladies who fancied me.
Presenter
So you were propositioned by women as well as men.
Presenter
Oh, yes. But I mean, I took that lightly because in those days one didn't really
Presenter
recognise that side of it as
Presenter
being sort of concrete, you know, it was a little bit beyond my understanding, really. So did you always manage to resist in the end?
Presenter
Yes, I did. I I chose my own lovers, or whatever you might call them, usually.
Presenter
Falling, but
Presenter
Never, except for my impresario, did I have anybody who was of any use to me.
Presenter
And I want to ask you about him in a moment, but let's pause there for record number four.
Presenter
When I was doing ENSA there was a a wonderful young man called Timothy Lloyd.
Presenter
He was wonderfully good looking. He was eighteen, the most fascinating sense of humour, and he made his own puppets, and presented these puppets Francis de Marlendit, Carol Gibbons, Evelyn Ley.
Presenter
and worked them himself on the stage with the records. And somehow Frances Day's singing I la la la love you so, and then I need you so became our song.
Presenter
And he used to often come and visit me in my flat during the war when there was a blackout and also we had an awful lot of pea soup fogs. You literally could not see your hand in front of your face. And so he could have lost direction. I used to go outside and wait for him and I could hear far, far away him whistling this I love you so So I would shout and then he'd come running.
Speaker 2
I need you so, I love you so I do
Speaker 2
I lulla love you so, I love me so, I won't want to know with you. La Lola love me too, as much as I love you. I could've dreamed that we'd cuckoo closely be took together all right through. And Poco proudly owned a buck-a-book bungalow for two.
Presenter
Francis Day singing I Lilla Love You So and what happened to Timothy Lloyd who came through the Pea Supers to you?
Presenter
He was killed in Italy when he was twenty two.
Presenter
What, in the middle of the war? Yeah.
Presenter
He was an officer. Now you did succumb to the advances just after the war, I think, both professional and personal, of of of one Eugene Iskoldov. That's right, by Impresario. Now, it seems to me he had two problems, because he wasn't very musical and he was married.
Presenter
Yes, but the th the the latter didn't really.
Presenter
function very much because he wasn't happily married and she was in Paris. And were you very much in love?
Presenter
No, no, I was never in love with him. I left home because my father
Presenter
had insulted me rather, and I left home, and he was the only person I could go to, and he had been
Presenter
wanting to give me a career for years, and I thought that this was the logical. But he wasn't very musical, so how did he. He wasn't musical. He had what is called the
Kyra Vayne
How did he
Presenter
In German it's called Finger Spitzengefule. It it's the instinct, you know, the gut feeding of whether somebody has talent or not. I mean, he had his own ballet company and things like that. He was uh Schaleppens in Presario for quite a time.
Presenter
But his great failing was that
Presenter
He loved himself above anything else and always wanted his name on top of any bill. He got me contracts, for instance, like Laceo, Barcelona, and other places, but he was never, ever there to see them carried through.
Presenter
so that he was never there to sign a contract for the next season.
Presenter
But now how did you know what you were doing? I mean beyond having had these singing lessons, how did you know about opera? How did you know how to sing? How did you develop your technique? Through experience and through t I think tremendous instinct. Can you describe your voice to me, what kind of voice you had? It's very difficult. I think it's an exquisitely beautiful voice with no faults to it. I mean now I listen to it objectively. And I think it had an amazing colouration. I think that I paint the words and give enormous emotional feeling without ever affecting the tonal quality. I think I was born with a natural voice which was naturally placed already. Some voices are not placed, they have have to be placed. So obviously in your view uh some people listening to you might say that sounds rather immodest to say you had this perfect voice, but but what you're saying is it's it was a gift. Oh, it was a total gift, and it's not immodesty because I'm totally objective. I listen to my voice.
Kyra Vayne
Yeah.
Presenter
as not belonging to me.
Presenter
I mean, after a span of forty years, can you imagine?
Presenter
Tell me about your next record. My next record is Kira Vane singing Yaroslavna's complant from Prince Igor. I sang the two Yaroslavna arias
Presenter
As an audition piece for the Liceo Barcelona, I just
Presenter
Sang them on tour tape and they were sent there and I got the job.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
My castaway Kira Vane, singing Yaroslavna's Complante from Borodin's Prince Igor. Now you were forty one, I think, when when your agent finally hit financial disaster and indeed committed suicide.
Presenter
This seems to have had a a a tremendous effect on you because you just decided to give up, didn't you? Well, I was penniless.
Presenter
I had refused any salary for a year.
Presenter
to help him financially, and I had pawned everything I possessed.
Presenter
and I was never able to bail the things up.
Presenter
But you still had a piano, didn't you?
Presenter
I had an upright piano, yes.
Presenter
Why? Why don't you say that? Because you decided to give that away. Well, I gave everything away.
Kyra Vayne
Why would you say that?
Kyra Vayne
One I gave every
Presenter
Eventually after about three years I gave everything away. I couldn't bear to have any mementos at home.
Presenter
Because of everything that might have been that might have been, everything that I still had to give.
Presenter
So you
Presenter
Did you almost feel suicidal yourself at this point? Oh, very much, except that I don't think that that is a solution. I don't think suicide is a solution at all. So you threw everything out, turned your back on your old life and went to work in a bank?
Presenter
Well, I w I went to work secretarially. I mean, I worked in banks, but I started as a temp and then became permanent, but I never kept the drop for long. How much did you tell your colleagues about your colourful past? Very little.
Presenter
They had no idea what she had done before.
Kyra Vayne
They had no
Presenter
What do you think what do you think they made of you?
Presenter
They must have thought I was an odd born.
Speaker 2
Huh?
Presenter
Almost like leading a double life, really. To put all that behind you and then go out and present yourself as a as a an ordinary person who'd never stood on a stage, never known the possibility of any fame. It's possible. I mean, I did it. I I did. I became a a non nonentity.
Presenter
That is why accepting what has happened now has been so difficult.
Presenter
Because a lot of my personal friends didn't know I sang.
Presenter
Great friends that I've had for forty years, you know. I mean, they knew I sang vaguely, but they had no concep.
Presenter
Of what a career I had had. But it must take enormous self-control to keep that a secret through all those years and through close friendships.
Presenter
It came naturally because for ten years I lived through hell. And then little by little you became a normal person. You lived a normal life. I had lovely friends. I always entertained. And that was forgotten. So now you're you're out of the closet. You're exposed. I'm exposed to actually. And people ask me why. What's so special about your voice? I don't know. It's the same as it was, isn't it? Tell me about record number six. Number six is ah. Rosa Pottsell was always a tremendous inspiration to me because I think our voices were very, very similar and she was always there for me as an example.
Presenter
of beautiful singing.
Presenter
So this is the Castadeva from Norma.
Presenter
Rosa Poncell singing the Aria Castadiva from Bellini's Norma with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra conducted by Giulio Setti, and that was recorded in nineteen twenty nine. One of your great inspirations.
Kyra Vayne
Yeah.
Presenter
What was your last professional performance? Can you remember?
Presenter
Yes, it was a a very big Russian recital for the B B C.
Presenter
Where?
Presenter
Broadcasting House?
Presenter
In this very building, I said.
Presenter
And that was then the offers dried up. That was sixty-five and it's singing at at my best.
Presenter
And in hindsight, do you think you made the right decision in the end in turning your back on it, or did you find peace of mind?
Presenter
I found peace of mind after about ten years, yeah.
Presenter
But uh
Presenter
No, I I I shouldn't have given it up.
Presenter
It's a terribly sad story or life, of of tragedy and misfortune and
Presenter
Unhappy accident, isn't it? But I'm Russian, huh?
Presenter
Is that what it is?
Kyra Vayne
Is that what it is?
Presenter
I suppose so.
Presenter
I think that somebody with a with a special talent
Presenter
Has a special character, really. I mean, either you're incredibly ambitious and aggressive.
Presenter
Or you value your talent to such an extent that you wouldn't allow anyone to pollute it.
Presenter
Does that make sense?
Presenter
And yes, it also
Presenter
means I think everything one's learned about you means that you are naturally of a very dramatic persona yourself, aren't you? Oh, I think so, yes. I'm very, very emotional, tremendously emotional.
Presenter
And I also have a very strong sense of responsibility towards people. I mean, anyone in trouble or anything I always take on, you know.
Kyra Vayne
Yeah.
Presenter
That's why I
Presenter
remained loyal to people to whom I shouldn't have done.
Presenter
Which was part of your problem all along? Yes, yes, absolutely.
Presenter
Tell me about your next piece of music. My next piece of music is Myself Singing in Frieling by Schubert.
Presenter
I did that as a one off just to hear what my voice sounded like when I was in my late twenties, and I never ever dreamt that it would be of such importance on a C D.
Speaker 2
His city and this hills under him and his land. For the murder and spield him grill in the tall, wisp by mersten friending straw. And stars so greatly war, so greatly far.
Speaker 2
For ye handy, the kings of troll ye hums or mour under teeth in gunklene fel sen keralden shun and a him belonda ho
Kyra Vayne
Remember
Speaker 2
Who deserved him a song?
Presenter
Kira Vein singing Schubert's Imfueling. So here you are being acclaimed at last. I can imagine that the last thing you want to have happen is to be sent to a desert island.
Presenter
That's right. You're absolutely right.
Presenter
But in a sense, of course, professionally speaking, at least you you've been on one for the last thirty years, haven't you? Yes, I have. I never thought of that. Yes, yes, you're right.
Presenter
But now it's all coming together again. It's come back. I mean, it's a prophecy that was made about thirty-four years ago, word for word.
Presenter
I was in the middle of a relationship that had gone sour, and somebody said, Why don't you call this woman? She's awfully good. She advises you clairvoyant.
Presenter
So I did. I didn't know her from Adam. She didn't know who I was. She came.
Presenter
She told me the the present situation and word for word she told me what was going to happen with this man.
Presenter
which did happen. And as she was leaving by the front door, she suddenly sort of got a a lack of expression on her face, and in a very mechanical way said
Presenter
When you're at the end of your life.
Presenter
And your voice is a memory and your career
Presenter
Nonexistent, your voice will be reborn.
Presenter
And I always remembered this, and thought that it was spiritual that I thought that when one dies one's soul
Presenter
Perhaps, you know, proclaims or bursts into song. That's how I thought.
Presenter
And when this actually started happening it was really very weird.
Presenter
Last record.
Presenter
Well, this is Beethoven's Symphony No. nine.
Presenter
Because to me it's always been tremendously elemental and I feel it on an island.
Presenter
When one is at the mercy of the elements and surrounded by them, this would be something apt and it's beautifully aligned.
Presenter
Part of the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. Nine, played by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwengler. If you could only take one of those records, Kiera, which one of the eight would it be? The Beethoven.
Presenter
'Cause it's long, yes. Not yourself? No, no, no, I can always draw a few scales.
Presenter
What about your book? What would you like? My book. I would love an im imaginative cookery book that would make one feel as if one had had a good meal. And what about your luxury?
Presenter
My luxury would be some form of animal.
Presenter
food which would tame the little four legged ones and the birds. I wouldn't be allowed to take my own cat, would I? I'm sorry, no you can't. No, I needn't. So I've prepared myself for that.
Kyra Vayne
Not
Presenter
I am mad about animals and I couldn't live without animals.
Presenter
Kira Vane, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you very much. I feel it's an enormous achievement.
Kyra Vayne
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Presenter asks
Can you describe your voice to me, what kind of voice you had?
It's very difficult. I think it's an exquisitely beautiful voice with no faults to it. I mean now I listen to it objectively. And I think it had an amazing colouration. I think that I paint the words and give enormous emotional feeling without ever affecting the tonal quality. I think I was born with a natural voice which was naturally placed already.
Presenter asks
In hindsight, do you think you made the right decision in the end in turning your back on [singing]?
I found peace of mind after about ten years, yeah. But uh No, I I I shouldn't have given it up.
“It is possible I was not an aggressive person. It is totally not in my nature to ever ask for favour. Because to me that is being beholden, and I just cannot be beholden.”
“I think that somebody with a with a special talent Has a special character, really. I mean, either you're incredibly ambitious and aggressive. Or you value your talent to such an extent that you wouldn't allow anyone to pollute it.”
“When you're at the end of your life. And your voice is a memory and your career Nonexistent, your voice will be reborn.”