Dame Margot Fonteyn

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Speaker 10:05

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:27

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? This is the 750th edition of Desert Island Discs, and I'm delighted that to celebrate the occasion, our castaway this week is Dame Margot Fonte.

Presenter0:38

De Marga, how well could you face out to complete isolation?

Dame Margot Fonteyn0:42

I don't think I could possibly know until I tried it that

Dame Margot Fonteyn0:47

I'm very tempted by the surroundings.

Dame Margot Fonteyn0:49

that I'm going to live in. In fact, I'm quite looking forward to this desert island. I can already imagine it quite clearly and I can see the sunshine blazing all day long.

Presenter0:58

What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Dame Margot Fonteyn1:01

Should I say ballet critics? No, that would be unfair.

Presenter1:03

Why not?

Dame Margot Fonteyn1:04

Ballet magazines. I don't think I should say those things because they're half joking and half serious. They're just for the first that came to my mind.

Presenter1:13

Yeah.

Dame Margot Fonteyn1:14

The telephones, I'd be delighted to get away from that.

Presenter1:17

Does the dancer have to be a very musical person?

Presenter1:21

And does one have to have studied music in order to interpret it, to phrase it?

Dame Margot Fonteyn1:26

Well, I haven't studied music very much. I think that I am musical in some ways.

Presenter1:32

Do you play an instrument?

Dame Margot Fonteyn1:33

I don't play an instrument, no, but I'm very affected by the rhythms in music particularly.

Dame Margot Fonteyn1:39

And I can't imagine dancing without music. I mean, that's the whole raison d'être for dancing. It doesn't exist.

Dame Margot Fonteyn1:46

without the music to my mind.

Presenter1:48

Do you play the grammar phone a lot?

Dame Margot Fonteyn1:50

Quite a lot. I like playing the gramophone, but uh I don't play it nearly as much as I uh would think I do and I don't quite understand why not, except that

Dame Margot Fonteyn2:00

I think music is so much a part of my dancing that if I'm listening to music, I'm in a way working. I'm not completely relaxed. But oddly enough,

Dame Margot Fonteyn2:09

What I've always looked forward to most in my life would be an old age on a desert island just playing gramophone records all day long.

Presenter2:18

Well, you only got eight to take with you. What's the first one?

Dame Margot Fonteyn2:21

After a lot of thought about ballet music, I decided to discard the whole lot and then I thought, no, just one.

Dame Margot Fonteyn2:28

I will choose from the ballet repertoire and that is Ravel, Daphnis and Chloe. It has the chorus in it and I particularly like the combination of voices with orchestral music.

Dame Margot Fonteyn2:40

And then this piece that I've chosen, the awakening scene, would be so marvelous in the early morning on a very beautiful desert island.

Presenter3:49

An excerpt from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe.

Presenter3:52

Anseme conducting the Swiss Romond Orchestra. What's your second choice?

Dame Margot Fonteyn3:58

I thought of Yehudi Menuen.

Dame Margot Fonteyn4:01

Most beautiful artist who in fact did play for two memorable performances at which I danced, Swanlake.

Dame Margot Fonteyn4:08

and another work at his Bath Festival, I chose this, I think, very, very beautiful Mozart Symphonia Concertanti in which he plays with Rudolf Barschai.

Presenter5:16

Yehudi Menhuin and Rudolf Bashai with the Bath Festival Orchestra in an excerpt from Mozart's Sinfonio Concertanti.

Presenter5:23

Say, Margaret, where were you born?

Dame Margot Fonteyn5:26

In England, in Surrey.

Presenter5:29

You're not entirely British by ancestry, are you?

Dame Margot Fonteyn5:31

My mother's half Brazilian.

Presenter5:33

When did you start to learn dancing? How old were you?

Dame Margot Fonteyn5:35

I suppose about six when I had my first dancing lesson.

Presenter5:40

Do you remember your very first appearance in public as a child?

Dame Margot Fonteyn5:43

No, I remember that I used to appear in dancing displays, but I can't remember the program.

Presenter5:48

Yeah. Did you show outstanding ability very early as a child?

Dame Margot Fonteyn5:53

Well, I think those would be two strong words to use. I think that I showed a natural aptitude and I enjoyed the dancing.

Presenter6:00

And enter.

Speaker 16:01

Yeah.

Dame Margot Fonteyn6:01

I took it terribly seriously, very, very seriously, I remember, always terribly anxious to do exactly what I'd been told to the extent that in my concentration I would almost always stick my tongue out the side of my mouth, trying so hard to get everything right. And I remember that my mother would be somewhere in the wings or my dancing teacher would be there saying, smile, smile.

Presenter6:22

You travelled quite a lot as a child, didn't you?

Dame Margot Fonteyn6:24

Yes, then from when I was about eight or nine we started to travel abroad.

Presenter6:29

Perfect.

Presenter6:30

Can you remember any particular inspiration by any dancer or by any performance that gave you a longing to make dancing your profession?

Dame Margot Fonteyn6:39

Well, I saw so little, you see, until I suppose when I was twelve when my mother and I came back to England.

Dame Margot Fonteyn6:48

for a short visit to see my brother who was in school.

Dame Margot Fonteyn6:51

And I saw the Camargo Society. It was the first ballet performance I'd ever seen.

Dame Margot Fonteyn6:56

And I saw Markava dancing.

Dame Margot Fonteyn6:58

And I saw Lisa Feed. I saw some of the early performances at the South as well. I think from that moment,

Dame Margot Fonteyn7:04

I knew what ballet was and then knew

Presenter7:05

Then

Dame Margot Fonteyn7:07

that I would like to try to do it, though I never thought I had any possibility of succeeding.

Presenter7:12

They have. Well, you were accepted for the Saddlers Worlds School and transferred to the Corps de Ballet of the Saddlers Worlds Company. How old were you there?

Dame Margot Fonteyn7:20

I was 14 when I went to the school and I was, I think, just 15 when I started to dance with a company.

Presenter7:28

The company really was still in its infancy.

Dame Margot Fonteyn7:30

Oh yes, it was very small in those days, so one could literally have one foot in the school and one foot in the company, which I did for quite a while. I was still a student when I was already dancing small solos in Les Offides.

Presenter7:36

Yeah.

Presenter7:42

And when Alicia Markova left the company, you became prima ballerina?

Dame Margot Fonteyn7:47

Oh no, no.

Dame Margot Fonteyn7:49

Absolutely not. No. Well, there was such an enormous...

Presenter7:50

No, right.

Dame Margot Fonteyn7:52

uh gap between mark of a

Dame Margot Fonteyn7:55

And the rest of us. And I was then two years younger.

Dame Margot Fonteyn8:01

I suppose, than some of the other soloists in the company, roughly what would happen, Ninette de Balois.

Dame Margot Fonteyn8:06

divided Markova's place among five of us, Mary Herner, Elizabeth Miller, Pamela May, June Bray, and myself.

Presenter8:10

Mary Hood.

Presenter8:14

Yeah.

Dame Margot Fonteyn8:14

She kind of pushed us all into the gap.

Dame Margot Fonteyn8:18

to try to fill it. We didn't quite fill it, but between us we made an attempt and

Presenter8:23

And it was indeed on repertory lines, you'd dance Giselle one evening and be back in the Cordebelle the next.

Dame Margot Fonteyn8:30

Yes, yes. Or in the same evening we would be in two or three valleys. We would be in every valley and in one of them we perhaps would be the principal and the other would be quite...

Presenter8:38

It'd be quite

Dame Margot Fonteyn8:38

In the quarter banning.

Presenter8:39

Yes. Now when you became a a principal, did you have a any feeling of the acceptance of destiny or did this come as a complete surprise?

Dame Margot Fonteyn8:48

Well I don't think I really noticed there wasn't any one point at which I became a principal. I was just working all the time in the valley in different roles, some of them

Presenter8:56

Hmm.

Dame Margot Fonteyn8:59

very important and some of them quite small.

Presenter9:01

As far as you were concerned, you were just dancing.

Dame Margot Fonteyn9:02

I was dancing, yeah. I was very busy at that time, much too busy to take stock of what was happening.

Presenter9:08

Shall we have another record now? What next?

Dame Margot Fonteyn9:11

Uh where have we got to? Oh yeah.

Dame Margot Fonteyn9:13

I think this one, very important, especially to play on Sundays. I think the Bach Pathicalia.

Dame Margot Fonteyn9:19

I can imagine those very tall palm trees make an almost arc.

Dame Margot Fonteyn9:23

Cathedral effect

Dame Margot Fonteyn9:25

And one could sit there imagining that one was in a very beautiful

Dame Margot Fonteyn9:29

Cathedral and listen to this most perfect and beautiful music.

Presenter10:33

The latter part of Bach's Basicalia in Z minor.

Presenter10:36

Played by Helmut Barker.

Presenter10:39

Dear Marco, when did the Saddler's World Company first dance abroad?

Dame Margot Fonteyn10:43

It must have been when we went to the Paris exhibition in 1937.

Presenter10:47

And by now, although still a small company, it was getting much more ambitious and tackling the big classical ballots.

Dame Margot Fonteyn10:53

Yes, then they were already doing Copalia and Giselle and Swan Lake, which had all been mounted while Markova was still with the company.

Presenter11:03

And later, a couple of years later when the war in Europe really got going.

Presenter11:08

They went abroad again and I believe the company lost quite a lot of its visible assets.

Dame Margot Fonteyn11:14

Well, everything really, more except what we were standing up in.

Dame Margot Fonteyn11:18

All the scenery, the costumes, music and everything were left behind in Holland when the Germans invaded that country. We left rather hurriedly and in an improvised manner and what we were wearing and what we could wear on top of our ordinary clothes.

Presenter11:32

I believe you were pursued closely enough to have seen the Germans.

Dame Margot Fonteyn11:36

Yes, I saw them landing by parachute. I saw them coming down in the first invasion.

Presenter11:42

Mm-hmm.

Presenter11:43

And during the rest of the war, the company kept going.

Dame Margot Fonteyn11:45

We were in the English provinces and in seasons in London, at first at Sadlas Wells and then at the new theatre, which was really where I think we spent most of the war.

Presenter11:55

Yes. And even under war crimes conditions new ballets were mounted and produced.

Dame Margot Fonteyn11:59

Yes, I think very interesting new ballets were done in that period.

Presenter12:03

And then when the war swept back onto the continent of Europe,

Presenter12:07

The ballet went to.

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:08

We swept back, yeah.

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:10

in khaki uniforms. This time we went first as an enter unit.

Presenter12:14

And then in February 1946, a very big event.

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:18

That was the opening of Cotton Garden with the Sleeping Beauty, yeah.

Presenter12:22

Three years later he led the company to the United States.

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:25

Yeah, again with the sleeping beauty, the famous first night in New York.

Presenter12:26

Again

Presenter12:27

Yeah.

Presenter12:29

How many American tours have you done now?

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:32

I've rather lost count. I think this will be the seventh this year.

Presenter12:35

And what other tours are especially important in your mind?

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:39

Well, we've really done so many and I've done several tours with smaller groups of other companies.

Speaker 112:45

My blood.

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:47

I've been to Japan with Royal Bally and also with Japanese Bally.

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:51

We've done tours in Italy.

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:55

I've been in South America as guest dancer with

Dame Margot Fonteyn12:58

other companies, most countries in Europe.

Presenter12:59

Yeah.

Presenter13:02

In the main, do you prefer classical ballet to a character or modern?

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:07

Um well

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:08

Classical ballet is much the most difficult to do.

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:12

So one wouldn't say one prefers it.

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:14

Um it's absolutely essential to do the classical ballets, I think. It's the standard by which one's judged and I wouldn't like not to do them, but I

Presenter13:23

Which is your favorite classical role?

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:24

Not a good place for them.

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:27

Um well, I suppose Swan Lake and Giselle and Sivi Newton or Chattanooga Ballot

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:33

To be honest, uh sleeping beauty in a way less than the others because it has less.

Presenter13:33

Yeah.

Speaker 113:34

Uh

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:38

character. It's one like the most difficult and the most satisfying if one can manage to do it more or less well, but it doesn't happen very often.

Presenter13:48

And which are the modern bellies?

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:50

Um

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:51

Oh, well, so many.

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:53

I couldn't see just one possibly.

Presenter13:55

Hold up.

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:56

Yeah.

Presenter13:56

Yeah.

Dame Margot Fonteyn13:56

On Dine of course, particularly my ballet, the new Romeo and Juliet I love doing, the Daphnis and Chloe, which I've chosen for this programme, and very many of them.

Presenter14:07

Let's have another record, whatnot.

Dame Margot Fonteyn14:09

I think this time something, oh yes, for my Latin blad I chose a very beautiful song, a Spanish song by Goridi.

Dame Margot Fonteyn14:19

called Mañanita de San Juan, sung by Teresa Berganza.

Speaker 414:36

In no change the city.

Presenter15:17

Therese Apaganza singing Magnanita de San Juan.

Presenter15:21

Den Margaret, have you any ambition yourself as a choreographer?

Dame Margot Fonteyn15:24

No, none at all.

Presenter15:26

Have you any unfulfilled ambitions as a dancer?

Presenter15:30

Any row?

Dame Margot Fonteyn15:31

Well, I think that now I've danced Romeo and Juliet and I've done Raimondo, which unfortunately I haven't done in London yet.

Dame Margot Fonteyn15:40

Those were two ballets that I had very particularly wanted to do. At the moment, I can't say I have an unfulfilled ambition.

Presenter15:47

Yeah.

Dame Margot Fonteyn15:48

In Valley.

Presenter15:50

If ballet dancing requires obviously tremendous discipline and concentration, how frequently do you give a performance that satisfies your own standards?

Dame Margot Fonteyn15:58

Oh, well perhaps one in twenty.

Dame Margot Fonteyn16:02

Not more.

Presenter16:03

Now you had three outstanding partnerships with Robert Helpman, with Michael Soames, and now with Norea.

Presenter16:09

Narev was taught in the Maliensky school and British dancing was based on the methods of the Mariinsky buts developed away from it for 40 years. Were many concessions necessary to match or two styles?

Dame Margot Fonteyn16:23

Well, yes, in some ways, but um

Dame Margot Fonteyn16:28

I wouldn't say really concessions, more slight adaptation because our versions of the ballets were different and in order to put them together.

Dame Margot Fonteyn16:37

We had to give way on one side or the other.

Presenter16:40

Mm-hmm.

Presenter16:41

What are your plans for the future? You're off to the United States again?

Dame Margot Fonteyn16:45

Yes, yes. Quite soon, unfortunately. I don't really want to be away for so long.

Presenter16:50

And after that?

Dame Margot Fonteyn16:52

I suppose I'll be dancing here in the autumn. I never look very far ahead into the future.

Dame Margot Fonteyn16:57

I'd always rather hoped I'd be sitting on that island.

Presenter17:00

Or what's the next record you're taking with you?

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:05

I thought that um

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:07

Mm-hmm.

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:08

One's moods vary so much.

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:12

And if one was left entirely on one's own.

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:15

one would be perhaps much more aware of one

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:18

Different moods because you wouldn't have other people there to take your mind off them, and so it'd be very important.

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:24

to choose different uh pieces of music. For example, the

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:28

Berganza's Spanish song was very good for a melancholy mood, perhaps slightly sorry for oneself.

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:36

And then I thought sometimes one would want tremendously impressive.

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:42

exciting music, something that would absolutely drown out every thought in your head and would just carry you away and you'd

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:50

forget everything where you were or

Dame Margot Fonteyn17:53

Any problems, one would just be completely swallowed up by this sea of terrific music, and so.

Dame Margot Fonteyn18:00

I thought of Berlio's Requiem and I chose this piece from the Berlioz Requiem.

Presenter19:06

A section from the Dies Ere from

Presenter19:09

Berlioz Requiem conducted by Charles Munch.

Presenter19:13

What's your sixth record, dear Margaret?

Dame Margot Fonteyn19:15

Well, of course, one must have piano music, and for me, one must have Richter.

Dame Margot Fonteyn19:24

Then where do you begin?

Dame Margot Fonteyn19:27

In choosing among all the marvelous piano music there is. So finally,

Dame Margot Fonteyn19:32

I came on

Dame Margot Fonteyn19:34

This little Chopin etude, very, very well known.

Speaker 419:37

Yeah.

Dame Margot Fonteyn19:38

But Chopin himself considered it the most beautiful he had ever written and that seemed enough for me combined with Richter's.

Dame Margot Fonteyn19:47

exquisite playing of it.

Presenter20:49

The artist Law Richter playing Chopin's etiude number three in E major.

Presenter20:55

Dear Margaret, could you look after yourself fairly well on this island? Are you a a practical person?

Dame Margot Fonteyn20:59

Oh yes, I think so.

Presenter21:01

You could live off the land.

Dame Margot Fonteyn21:02

Oh, I think so.

Presenter21:03

Fish?

Dame Margot Fonteyn21:04

Yeah.

Presenter21:05

You're a good swimmer, I know.

Dame Margot Fonteyn21:07

I would learn how to fish. I've never tried to fish before. I didn't want to catch fish, but I'm sure I would learn how to. I usually have a very good appetite. That would in itself would teach me how to catch fish.

Presenter21:16

Would you try to escape?

Dame Margot Fonteyn21:19

I don't think so, no.

Presenter21:20

Have you a religious philosophy that would help you in isolation?

Dame Margot Fonteyn21:24

Um I think it's quite adequate for the situation, yes.

Presenter21:29

Let's have record number seven.

Dame Margot Fonteyn21:32

I'd been thinking of the various aspects of my life on this desert island, in fact planning it quite carefully and as I'm fairly industrious by fits and starts and very lazy in between.

Dame Margot Fonteyn21:44

I thought at some stage or other I would probably discover how to ferment coconuts and make coconut wine. And at that point, I would want some kind of a nightclub atmosphere, something very sentimental.

Dame Margot Fonteyn21:57

After a lot of thought, I chose Lena Horne as one of the most beautiful nightclub artists.

Dame Margot Fonteyn22:05

And, oh, a tune that dates me very much and a lot of people of my generation will be very happy to hear. I chose Honeysuckle Rose.

Speaker 422:14

Every honey bee sighs with jealousy.

Speaker 422:25

When they see you out with me.

Speaker 422:29

I don't blame them, goodness knows.

Speaker 422:34

Honey soccer rose.

Presenter22:41

Lena Horn.

Presenter22:43

And now we come to your eighth record and your last. What's that going to be?

Dame Margot Fonteyn22:46

Well, of course, I wouldn't think of getting drunk every night, only just occasionally. And I can I love

Dame Margot Fonteyn22:54

Opera, very particularly. I go to opera

Dame Margot Fonteyn22:58

Always more than I got valley.

Dame Margot Fonteyn23:01

And again, there was such a wide field. I hardly knew where to begin.

Dame Margot Fonteyn23:06

until I thought of the invocation to the moon from the first act of Turando and I thought this is the most perfect music.

Dame Margot Fonteyn23:15

for finishing a beautiful lazy day on a beautiful desert island.

Presenter24:15

The invocation to the moon from the first act was Puccini's Giorando, the Scala Milan recording conducted by Tulio Serafin.

Presenter24:24

Well, there are your eight records there, Margot. If you could only have one, which would it be?

Dame Margot Fonteyn24:30

Well, that's really an unfair thing to ask, isn't it? I know. Um

Dame Margot Fonteyn24:35

I suppose I would have to choose the one that could best stand being

Dame Margot Fonteyn24:42

heard and reheard hundreds of times.

Dame Margot Fonteyn24:46

Which would bring me, of course, to the one most

Dame Margot Fonteyn24:50

complex and perfect

Dame Margot Fonteyn24:52

in form and construction that I could study and

Dame Margot Fonteyn24:56

learn more and more about it as I re-heard it was the Bach Pasakani.

Presenter25:01

Right.

Presenter25:02

and one luxury to take with you.

Dame Margot Fonteyn25:05

Oh yes, that's

Dame Margot Fonteyn25:06

Easy now. I thought a mask that skin divers use. I love swimming in any case and I would have a whole new world too.

Dame Margot Fonteyn25:14

explore underwater if I should by any chance get tired of my life on the island.

Presenter25:19

Right. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare.

Dame Margot Fonteyn25:24

Absolutely impossible question too.

Presenter25:26

Yes, I know.

Dame Margot Fonteyn25:27

Um

Dame Margot Fonteyn25:29

Well, of course the Bible and Shakespeare would really keep me busy for years in any case. I think that a book I would take that I find beautiful writing, beautiful literature, is Hadrian's Memoirs by Marguerite Josana.

Presenter25:42

Right.

Presenter25:43

And thank you, Dame Marco Fontaine, for letting us hear your choice of Desert Island Disc and for taking part in our 750th edition.

Dame Margot Fonteyn25:51

But I have enjoyed it very much.

Presenter25:53

Goodbye everyone.