Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Eight records
It's an extraordinary thing, but every time that this particular song is played, or I hear it, which is not very often, something very unexpected and very nice happens to me.
Reminds me very much of uh my mother and her people who came from the Alps on the border of France and Italy, and you see a lot of swallows there at certain times of the year.
I used to play it once upon a time myself before the Broken Arm episode, and I loved Wussie, and I think I like this one the best of all.
a fantastic artist, I think well one with tremendous production
Concierto de Aranjuez (second movement)
I'm very fond of guitar music and I think also it's a very wonderful piece of writing.
reminds me of sort of sunburned country, wide open spaces, um California in in general, really. Being in a small place, I presume the desert island will be small. I'd like to have this feeling of wind and wide open spaces.
The keepsakes
The book
Marguerite Young
It took her seventeen years to write it, and maybe I'll be there long enough to read it.
The luxury
In conversation
Presenter asks
What was it your first ambition to be?
A hairdresser.
Presenter asks
And when did singing come into your life?
Well, I suppose when I was at school still, the school choir, and then one of the girls suggested that I joined a group called the Youth Operatic Society. in my last year at high school, and we did lots and lots of Gilbert and Sullivan's over a period of years, during which time I had broken my arm and didn't take any more piano lessons, and had thought to fill in some time and for an interest I would take some singing lessons.
Presenter asks
Of course the big sensation was when you replaced Madame Callas in Tosca last year at very short notice indeed.
Yes, it was quite short notice. I was in the process of preparing the Angel of Fire, which was a very difficult work and was being given its English premiere some, I suppose, ten days or so after this Some other thing. That was pretty terrifying, but the one thing I didn't have the long time to think about it, did I?
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 2
Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and you are listening to Desert Island Discs.
Speaker 2
This edition of Desert Island Discs was archived without the music.
Speaker 2
So although the Castaways choices are introduced, they're not part of this recording.
Speaker 2
Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.
Speaker 2
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2
And the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? Our castaway this week is an opera singer of international fame.
Presenter
It's Maricolia.
Presenter
Miss Collier, on your very extensive travels have you visited any desert islands?
Marie Collier
Yes, I have, Roy. When I left Australia about ten or eleven years ago, I took a very slow boat to Europe.
Marie Collier
and stopped at Numea and Port Villa in the New Hebrides, with cannibals forty miles away, and spends also a week in Tahiti, where there are lots of little beaches that are really deserted. One could imagine oneself in such a circumstance.
Presenter
It
Presenter
Do you know what to expect?
Presenter
Could you endure loneliness?
Marie Collier
Yes, for a while I could.
Marie Collier
But I think if I knew I had to be by myself it wouldn't worry me.
Presenter
Did you have any plan on selecting these eight records to take with you?
Marie Collier
No, they just came to the the surface somehow, and they were skimmed off the way you skim a broth, you know.
Presenter
What is the first one?
Marie Collier
Well, the first one I would like to hear, or would like to have with me on this island, is the Scheherazade of Ravel, sung by Victoria de Los Angeles.
Marie Collier
And I'm sure you won't have time to play it also. Could I possibly hear part of the first song, Azee?
Presenter
An excerpt from Ravel's Sheherazad, sung by Victoria at Los Angeles.
Presenter
What next?
Marie Collier
Well, the next one I think I'd like to have with me would be Autumn Leaves.
Marie Collier
Please?
Presenter
Uba
Marie Collier
At Yves Montan.
Presenter
And why do you choose this?
Marie Collier
It's an extraordinary thing, but every time that this particular song is played, or I hear it, which is not very often, something very unexpected and very nice happens to me.
Presenter
I hope that works on this island.
Marie Collier
I wonder what's going to happen this time.
Presenter
Yves Montau.
Presenter
Miss Collie, whereabouts in Australia were you born?
Marie Collier
I was born in um an old gold mining city of Ballarat in the state of Victoria, but I lived most of my life in Melbourne.
Presenter
Do you come from a musical family?
Marie Collier
No, there's no music in the family at all, really. The only music that I heard at home was my mother.
Marie Collier
her singing when she was ironing or whistling while doing the housework.
Presenter
Hm. Did you take music lessons at all?
Marie Collier
I think I started piano lessons when I was about ten until I was about sixteen or seventeen.
Presenter
What was it your first ambition to be?
Marie Collier
A hairdresser.
Presenter
What, in fact, did you do when you left school?
Marie Collier
I went to work in a pharmacy.
Presenter
Were you going to qualify as a pharmacist?
Marie Collier
I had thought so, but then I became more interested in meeting people behind the counter than in studying, I think.
Presenter
Yes. And when did singing come into your life?
Marie Collier
Well, I suppose when I was at school still, the school choir, and then one of the girls suggested that I joined a group called the Youth Operatic Society.
Marie Collier
in my last year at high school, and we did lots and lots of Gilbert and Sullivan's over a period of years, during which time I had broken my arm and didn't take any more piano lessons, and had thought to fill in some time and for an interest I would take some singing lessons.
Speaker 2
During
Marie Collier
And these continued sort of sporadically, really.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
And you continued to do all this while you were in the pharmacy?
Marie Collier
Yes, I did.
Presenter
How long did you stay in the pharmacy?
Marie Collier
Uh until I started to sing really as a l living, until nineteen fifty two when I made my debut in Cavalleria Rusticana with the National Opera Company in Melbourne. I had been taking singing lessons
Speaker 2
I had the
Marie Collier
then for just a little over a year with a very wonderful woman called Madame Catherine Wheelart. And she had really she brainwashed me and my fiancé at the at the time, who was now my husband, into to convincing me and he that I had a career and a duty to be an opera singer. And so she pushed me into a sort of an opera class at the National Theatre.
Speaker 2
And
Marie Collier
classes, and I was just told I was going to do sanfuzza in Cavalry Aristicand with the following I don't know how many months ahead.
Marie Collier
And my boss in the pharmacy, who was a very nice man, very kind, said that I could take my annual fortnight's holidays in half days so I could attend the rehearsals. And, poor man, about three weeks after the debut, I had so much work to do and such a future ahead that I didn't work for him any more.
Presenter
As a result of this performance in Cavalier Rusticana, what did it lead to? Radio work, concerts?
Marie Collier
Yeah.
Marie Collier
Yes, a series of um soloist uh sort of things with the Victorian Symphony Orchestra, other operas to prepare for the National Opera Company, concerts in Tasmania or in in um New South Wales.
Presenter
And when did you decide to come to Europe?
Marie Collier
I left Australia in november nineteen fifty four.
Presenter
To go where?
Marie Collier
Well, I wasn't sure, actually, when we set off on this slow boat trip to Europe. I got off at Marseilles not knowing quite whether we were going to Vienna or going to Milan. Well, we went we're going via Milan anyhow. And when I got to Milan, I said, This is it, this is where we're staying.
Presenter
You had your husband with you? Yes. He didn't object to any of this. I mean, he tried to press tag along.
Marie Collier
Yeah.
Marie Collier
No, when you see Madame had brainwashed him.
Presenter
Of course he is.
Presenter
All right, well we've got you to Europe. Let's have your third record. What next?
Marie Collier
Well, I'd love to hear Ferruccio Tagliavini singing Rondine al Nido, which is an Italian song I think of the nineteen twenties. A lovely one. Reminds me very much of uh my mother and her people who came from
Marie Collier
the Alps on the border of France and Italy, and you see a lot of swallows there at certain times of the year.
Presenter
Randini Al Nido sung by Ferruccio Tagliavini.
Presenter
So you are half Italian, Miss Collins.
Marie Collier
Yes, partially from my mother's people.
Presenter
Well, let's go back to the first time you were in Italy when you had arrived in in Milan.
Marie Collier
Hmm?
Presenter
How long did you stay there?
Marie Collier
Stayed there altogether for nineteen months.
Presenter
Stacking
Marie Collier
Uh yes, I am studying with a wonderful maestro and learning operas, some of which I have not even performed yet.
Presenter
And what brought you from Milan to London?
Marie Collier
A coincidence as it mostly happened all the way during my career and my life.
Marie Collier
I met a girl who became my very dear friend.
Marie Collier
She was a singer at Covent Garden.
Marie Collier
After her holiday of your study period of some months in Italy, she returned to Covent Garden, but spoke about me to the people at the garden.
Marie Collier
And um then
Marie Collier
Some months after that I got a letter from her with everything underlined please get something bigger than just a small room, because, coincidentally, Lord Howard and Joan Ingpen will be in Milan on the same day.
Marie Collier
And they heard me and Howard said I should come to England and audition for the directors at the Opera House. So after coming,
Marie Collier
auditioning, doing a little work. I was given a contract, so I went back to Hilan to pack up the baby and the husband and the suitcases, and there we were in England.
Presenter
What was your first appearance at Covencastle?
Marie Collier
There's the first lady in the magic flute.
Presenter
Yes.
Marie Collier
And then subsequently, I think the next one was Mosetta in Bohem in English.
Presenter
And you made many guest appearances while you were at the garden at Saddle as well.
Marie Collier
Yes, I have.
Presenter
Now looking back on all the parts you've sung, which was the one that gave you the first?
Presenter
Big success.
Marie Collier
Well, the one that attracted the first attention to me, I suppose, and which I remember very vividly, was Vodsek.
Presenter
He is.
Marie Collier
I've all been bad.
Presenter
You have sung uh a lot of modern rose.
Marie Collier
Yes, I have done quite a number of modern roles.
Presenter
Of course the big sensation was when you replaced Madame Callas in Tosca last year at very short notice indeed.
Marie Collier
Yes, it was quite short notice. I was in the process of preparing the Angel of Fire, which was a very difficult work and was being given its English premiere some, I suppose, ten days or so after this Some other thing.
Presenter
And also you had to face an audience, knowing that a lot of them had paid black market prices.
Marie Collier
And here Madam
Presenter
Yeah.
Marie Collier
That was pretty terrifying, but the one thing I didn't have the long time to think about it, did I?
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
Well, you had a wonderful success. I remember reading about your fourteen curtain calls and the standing ovation.
Marie Collier
Yeah.
Presenter
Let's have a record number four now.
Marie Collier
Yes, record number four please I would like to hear is the Debussy Cathedral Angluti.
Presenter
Why?
Marie Collier
I used to play it once upon a time myself before the Broken Arm episode, and I loved Wussie, and I think I like this one the best of all.
Presenter
Guys a king playing debuses La Cathedral Angloti.
Presenter
Have you been back to Australia?
Marie Collier
Yes, I have, Roy. I went back to Australia in nineteen sixty four for the Adelaide Festival, and I sang Troilus and Cressida there.
Presenter
Yes. Now why is it that Australia, a country without many musical opportunities, produces so many first-rate singers? Is it the climate or the teaching?
Marie Collier
I think the climate has a great deal to do with it, really. Also, you know, I am asked this question quite a lot, and I've consequently had to think about it a bit.
Marie Collier
I don't know how valid this is, it's just an idea.
Marie Collier
You know, when you are in a country that's either new,
Marie Collier
or depressed in some sort of way, where the standard of living is not high, where work is hard.
Marie Collier
Some sort of
Marie Collier
part of people are forced out into song or into music. Consider Wales, consider Italy, consider Australia, even America, which is producing quite a number of very, very good singers now.
Presenter
Yes.
Presenter
What are your future plans? What have you got in the book?
Marie Collier
Well, I'm going to Athens I'm going to from Athens to Montreal to Palermo and back to London.
Marie Collier
and then spending three months in Buenos Aires and then going to Vancouver and San Antonio and New Mexico and San Francisco.
Presenter
It sounds wonderful.
Marie Collier
And also to the new Met.
Presenter
In
Marie Collier
In February 1967, I'm doing a a world premiere of an opera based on the Eugene O'Neill play Morning Becomes Electra.
Presenter
That's exciting.
Marie Collier
And but the most exciting thing is that the producer will be m the film producer Michael Kakoyanis, who does wonderful work, I think.
Speaker 3
Mhm. Will this be the first role you've created, your first World Premiere?
Marie Collier
No, I created a Hecuba in Tippett's King Priam, the only one that comes to mind at the moment.
Presenter
Now all this globetrotting must be a little complicated by the fact that you have four children.
Marie Collier
Yes, it is. They're in very, very good hands, and I miss them awfully. You miss contact with them.
Marie Collier
But um also another problem you know in this globe trotting is uh suitcases and wardrobe and enormous bills for excess baggage.
Presenter
Coach
Presenter
Have you any big ambition in
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Presenter
Want to sing any particular one.
Marie Collier
No, not really. I'd like to sing Manolesco, certainly, and others I can think of too, but I wouldn't call them ambitions.
Presenter
Any place you particularly want to sing.
Marie Collier
No, not really. I think the more places I sing abroad, the more I want to sing at Covent Garden.
Presenter
Well that's a nice compliment to Covent Gard. Let's have your next record. What is it?
Marie Collier
It is from Verde Simone Bocanegra.
Marie Collier
Come in questora Bruna.
Marie Collier
The aria of Amelia sung by my favorite singer, Victoria de Los Angeles.
Presenter
An aria from Simon Bocanegra sung by Victoria Los Angles.
Presenter
What next?
Marie Collier
Well, a fantastic artist, I think well one with tremendous production, Edith Piaff and please my I have Nour je neur Gretuier.
Presenter
Aided Piaf in one of her great songs, Nanchen or Gretrian.
Presenter
During your childhood in Australia did you do any camping out?
Marie Collier
No, not really. We used to go for lots of picnics, though, to the beach.
Marie Collier
But uh no camping out.
Presenter
Oh, what a pity. Still, are you a practical person? What we're getting at now is how you would manage on this island.
Marie Collier
Yes, I'm essentially a practical person. I think I'm better with hammer and nails than with a needle and thread.
Presenter
So you could look after yourself, you could
Presenter
Find some kind of shelter, make some kind of shelter.
Presenter
live off the land.
Marie Collier
Yes.
Presenter
If you found that you could construct a craft or one was washed up,
Presenter
Would you try to escape?
Marie Collier
No.
Presenter
No because you wouldn't want to take the chance or no because you'd want to stay there.
Marie Collier
Well, if I could see another landmass, yes, I might try and and and get towards the other land mass. I've used this craft to go around the island.
Presenter
Hello to the
Marie Collier
But I think I'd stay there.
Presenter
Yes. I think you'll be very wise. Let's have record number seven.
Marie Collier
Yes, I think I'd like to have the Rodrigue guitar concerto, please. I'm very fond of guitar music and I think also it's a very wonderful piece of writing.
Presenter
Very
Presenter
Part of the second movement of Rodrigo's guitar concerto with Natiso Ypez as soloist.
Presenter
Now your last one, Monnie.
Marie Collier
Here's what I think I'd like to have. They call the wind Mariah from Paint Your Wagon.
Presenter
Mm-hmm.
Marie Collier
You mean to ask me why?
Presenter
Yes?
Marie Collier
Well, you don't have to, but it's just that it's uh reminds me of sort of sunburned country, wide open spaces, um
Marie Collier
California in in general, really. Being in a small place, I presume the desert island will be small. I'd like to have this feeling of
Presenter
I'd like to have
Marie Collier
wind and wide open spaces.
Presenter
John Reid singing They Call the Wind Mariah from Paint Your Wagon.
Presenter
If you would choose only one of the eight discs you've let us here, which would it be?
Marie Collier
Well, without a doubt it would be the Scheherazade.
Presenter
And one luxury to take to the island with you?
Marie Collier
Is this a luxury?
Marie Collier
For aesthetic reasons really, isn't it?
Presenter
It mustn't be anything of any practical use.
Marie Collier
where once I saw the most beautiful frieze of horses
Marie Collier
in an exhibition of Etruscan art that had been collected and put together from private collections and ar galleries in the world. I think I'd like to have that, please.
Presenter
Somehow we'll find it for you.
Presenter
One book.
Marie Collier
Well, this has caused a great deal of of of
Marie Collier
sort of agony with me. I thought that I'd like to have with me, first of all, I thought a La Rue Castronomique, but then again there mightn't be any food on the island and it might be a just a form of mental torture to read it. So I think I'd like to take with me Miss Mackintosh, My Darling, by Marguerite Young. It took her seventeen years to write it, and maybe I'll be there long enough to read it.
Presenter
Miss Mackintosh, My Darling by Marguerite Yankee. It's a novel, isn't it?
Marie Collier
Yeah.
Marie Collier
It's a novel, yes, a very, very
Marie Collier
interesting um
Marie Collier
evocative novel. You read about five lines and then you want to go back and reread the five lines again because of the wonderful imagery.
Presenter
Mm-hmm.
Presenter
Right. Well, thank you, Mari Collier, for letting us hear your choice of desert islands in
Marie Collier
Well, it's my pleasure, Roy. Goodbye.
Presenter
So bye everyone.
Presenter asks
Now why is it that Australia, a country without many musical opportunities, produces so many first-rate singers? Is it the climate or the teaching?
I think the climate has a great deal to do with it, really. Also, you know, I am asked this question quite a lot, and I've consequently had to think about it a bit. I don't know how valid this is, it's just an idea. You know, when you are in a country that's either new, or depressed in some sort of way, where the standard of living is not high, where work is hard. Some sort of part of people are forced out into song or into music. Consider Wales, consider Italy, consider Australia, even America, which is producing quite a number of very, very good singers now.
Presenter asks
Now all this globetrotting must be a little complicated by the fact that you have four children.
Yes, it is. They're in very, very good hands, and I miss them awfully. You miss contact with them. But um also another problem you know in this globe trotting is uh suitcases and wardrobe and enormous bills for excess baggage.
Presenter asks
Have you any big ambition in Want to sing any particular one.
No, not really. I'd like to sing Manolesco, certainly, and others I can think of too, but I wouldn't call them ambitions.
“That was pretty terrifying, but the one thing I didn't have the long time to think about it, did I?”
“I used to play it once upon a time myself before the Broken Arm episode, and I loved Wussie, and I think I like this one the best of all.”
“I miss them awfully. You miss contact with them.”
“I'd like to sing Manolesco, certainly, and others I can think of too, but I wouldn't call them ambitions.”
“I think the more places I sing abroad, the more I want to sing at Covent Garden.”
“I think I'm better with hammer and nails than with a needle and thread.”