Sir Thomas Allen

Speaker 10:00

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. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a singer. He grew up in the north east of England, where music and singing were part of everyday life, but nobody thought of making a living out of it until a teacher spotted his particular talent and helped him win a place at the Royal College of Music in London.

Presenter0:45

In a career that's never seen him out of work, he's sung in all the great opera houses of the world, and I should add all the great opera houses in this country, too. The role with which he's most associated is Mozart's Don Giovanni, a part which plays to his strengths as an actor as well as those of a singer. Why should I have this gift bestowed on me? he's been heard to ask. How have I earned it? He is Sir Thomas Allan, known as Tom in the trade. But there's the old work ethic, Tom, coming through strongly there. Is it that you just don't think that singing is a proper job, as they say.

Sir Thomas Allen1:11

And the

Sir Thomas Allen1:20

No, it's true. Uh that's why as uh you use the phrase, what have I done to deserve it? I suppose it starts with the number of people during one's life of uh of being an artist who say regularly to you, Yes, but what do you do during the day uh for a proper job? And it's very difficult still. I I can understand why they say that, because there was a long period in my life when I didn't realize that uh a job such as mine existed. I thought if there were opera singers, they were exotic creatures.

Presenter1:47

But you thought if you sang you just sang and that's what you did to amuse yourself sometimes.

Sir Thomas Allen1:47

But you feel

Sir Thomas Allen1:51

Yes. I mean, I knew there were people that did it professionally, but, you know, the idea of doing it professionally seemed to be the gift of a very, very few people throughout the world.

Presenter2:01

So you must have thought you were extraordinary when you set off from from the north east down to London to the Royal Colle. Did you think you were the only guy around who could sing, as it were?

Sir Thomas Allen2:09

Oh no, I didn't. And uh if I did so I I would quickly have had that idea dispelled, because I walked into the Royal College and felt very humbled by it, in fact intimidated by it. There were people there who were already somehow channelled into that way of thinking, knowing where they were going. I didn't and I was I had everything to discover.

Presenter2:30

But what m what might you have been if you hadn't exploited your talent?

Sir Thomas Allen2:35

A teacher, perhaps a doctor I wanted to be.

Sir Thomas Allen2:38

There was a constant reminder in the air, by virtue of the fact that in those days at least there there was a lot of coal dust in the air, so you just opened your nostrils to the air, and the pit was there.

Sir Thomas Allen2:48

You were surrounded by pits, there were three in my hometown. And and orange sodium lights are in my mind, and damp early winter days, you know, when it's dark in in Durham, and it was pretty bleak at times. And these buses would go by with fellows going to the pit, you know, with workmen written on the front, and you're thinking, Oh God, no, I don't think I want to do that.

Sir Thomas Allen3:11

Gotta try and find something other than that. Then the Scholars' bus came through, and ours was the Scholars' Bus.

Presenter3:16

So education.

Sir Thomas Allen3:17

So the scholars bus there was a there was a road sign at the time that just had I don't remember do you remember it, the old road signs, and it just had a flame, a torch, and it was a signal for a school.

Presenter3:25

School.

Sir Thomas Allen3:27

So that that torch and the scholar's bus were the passport.

Presenter3:32

Tell me about your first record.

Sir Thomas Allen3:34

Well, I suppose it's opening the nostrils and trying to get rid of the pit. This is um Mendelssohn. I love Mendelssohn. He was a man of many parts, a g a a brilliant composer from an early age. And this is actually the Scottish Symphony because it's full of fresh air.

Presenter4:52

The opening of Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernard Heitink.

Presenter4:57

Don Giovanni, um, Tom Allen, you're most famous for, as I said in the introduction, you've played him everywhere. Were you the first Englishman, or the only Englishman, to have played him at La Scala Milan, I think?

Sir Thomas Allen5:07

I think I was the first in eighty seven, eighty eight, whenever it was.

Presenter5:10

How many times you played him altogether?

Sir Thomas Allen5:12

Something like over two hundred.

Presenter5:15

But why? Why is there something special about this

Presenter5:19

Terrible, terrible man, this sex obsessed murderer, seducer, would be rapist

Sir Thomas Allen5:26

And you say why?

Presenter5:30

This is the dark side of Tom Allen.

Sir Thomas Allen5:32

Yes, well why do you need to ask?

Presenter5:33

No,

Sir Thomas Allen5:34

It's a fascinating study. I mean, he's a legendary figure. He's a byword for so many excuses and reasons for ways of living or whatever it might be. As a baritone, one was always aware that this music was there, this role was there, this figure was there. And would he ever come your way? And he did. And the first offer I resisted, knowing that it was quite a mountain to climb. And then the second time it came around, which was at Gleinbourne, I accepted. And it's been an experience rather unlike any other, because I think it really allowed, if there is an actor in me, it allowed me to delve much more deeply inside myself.

Presenter6:17

Is that what it is then? It is the role, it is the part, it is the music. It just strikes me, reading about what you've said about it over the years, that it's something more than that. It it seemed to be a kind of recognition somehow. You saw that part and you just knew it it's different from any other part for you.

Sir Thomas Allen6:32

Um

Sir Thomas Allen6:34

Finding Don Giovanni for me was like finding a role that was always there inside me, that just needed to be revealed. I had to learn the music, obviously. And I just found that this thing was in me, and it was rather like

Sir Thomas Allen6:48

Michael Angel discovering prisoners inside blocks of marble, and he would carve and carve away at these things, and they would emerge, rather than him imposing a figure on the marble, they were already in there, and that's how Giovanni's always felt to me, as though it was

Presenter7:01

So it was a cold-blooded psychopath inside you tried to get out. Is that what you say?

Sir Thomas Allen7:04

Try to get out. Is that what you say? Well, there's a cold-blooded psychopath inside a lot of people. You know, book the the rules of society by which we live.

Sir Thomas Allen7:12

mean that we suppress that and we keep those feelings, those those darker sides of us down. But I'm fortunate in having a licence to allow those things to be played and seen.

Presenter7:23

I could number two.

Sir Thomas Allen7:25

Record number two is um.

Sir Thomas Allen7:27

I suppose trying to purge ourselves of the sins of Don Giovanni. This is the Resurrection Symphony of Mahler. Mahler has been a quite an important figure in my life. I've sung a lot of Mahler over the years, and this particular symphony I si think says so much spiritually as much as physically and mentally as well.

Presenter8:44

The closing moments of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, Number two in C minor, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and chorus conducted by Klaus Tenstedtt. I'd like to know more, Tom Allen, about this musical family and community you were brought up in. Apparently your grandfather built an organ in your bedroom.

Sir Thomas Allen9:01

Yeah, I think my grandfather would have built anything, really, given half a chance. But um they were very strong chapel people. Hymn singing and song singing was very much a part and parcel of the family.

Presenter9:12

So they'd all come round in your parlour, would they?

Sir Thomas Allen9:14

Yeah, I mean it was Sundays, in fact, from lunch time I I'd been Mananas, my mother's mother, and she had thirteen children and as many of them as could used to assemble there every Sunday. I mean we had huge me in this tiny house, tiny, tiny house.

Presenter9:29

What was the instrument? Harmonium or something?

Sir Thomas Allen9:30

No, there was a there was a there was a piano, an old piano, with with candelabra still swinging out from it, you know. And there were about my father and another two uncles would play their party pieces and

Presenter9:41

What what? What sort of stuff?

Sir Thomas Allen9:43

Oh, my father would play in the style of Charlie Coons, and then some standards would come out like that.

Presenter9:47

Songs that won the war.

Sir Thomas Allen9:48

grandfather's clock and everything else. And okay, we'd finish up probably with the red flag.

Presenter9:49

Yeah.

Sir Thomas Allen9:52

Or the internationale, you know.

Presenter9:54

But what it was a bit of handle or some leader or anything of that kind?

Sir Thomas Allen9:58

I'm sorry?

Presenter9:58

Handles literally.

Sir Thomas Allen10:01

Bit of m the you might have got a bit of Messiah in uh my father's parents' house, but uh n not at the other one. No, it was it was just songs. And it was just around the piano.

Presenter10:10

So tell me about this organ. What was it made of and why was it there?

Sir Thomas Allen10:11

The only

Sir Thomas Allen10:13

Well, he was a craftsman, my grandfather. He turned metal in the shipyards and worked for the glass company in Lo in Sunderland as well. But he um had a lathe in his back garden and he was always working on things. And for forty years, in fact, he built this beautiful organ from bits of wood that he'd collected. I mean, lovely wood. I mean, it was beautifully planed and finished, and it was a real craftsman's job, and some of the pipes were made from gummed brown paper that he just turned and then tuned and fitted. And my grandmother would stand at the side and and get hold of the handle and pump this thing up.

Presenter10:46

The bellows.

Sir Thomas Allen10:47

And he would uh play out some little hymns once he was a little bit more.

Presenter10:49

Why why was it in your bedroom?

Sir Thomas Allen10:52

It was in their bedroom. It was in their bedroom. Well, they were older, and maybe life had um allowed for other activities in the bedroom than than it's normally reserved for, so he'd built this organ, and they played hymns in there, for heaven's sake.

Presenter11:04

They played hymns in

Presenter11:06

Very sweet. And apparently your father had all all sorts of instruments at home he kept under the stairs. Under the stairs.

Sir Thomas Allen11:10

Under the stairs we had a ukulele and we had a clarinet, we had a violin, we had a guitar. He used to love to try to play Hawaiian guitar. He had this thing he used to slide up and down the guitar and pretend he was, I dunno, Edmund Ross or somebody.

Presenter11:23

So you sang your way through all of this. When was the first time you sang in public?

Sir Thomas Allen11:28

As a broken-voiced soloist was when I was about fifteen.

Sir Thomas Allen11:33

And I sang on a school concert, accompanied by my physics-come singing-teacher.

Presenter11:39

What did you sing?

Sir Thomas Allen11:40

I sang a song called Simon the Cellarer.

Sir Thomas Allen11:43

Which was all about old ladies and

Sir Thomas Allen11:46

Alcoholic drinks and, you know, things like that. I'd I'd only just graduated from short trousers, but there I was doing this old man song.

Presenter11:52

And was everybody kind of was there an intake of breath, did everybody was everybody by this stage thinking this boy has got a real talent? Or was it only the physics master who spoke?

Sir Thomas Allen12:01

No, no, there was uh there was a surprise. Because they were hearing me at fifteen sing with a voice that is recognizable as the voice I have now. So nothing much has changed.

Presenter12:14

Record number three.

Sir Thomas Allen12:15

I I think on a desert island there'll be lows and there'll be highs and one thing or another, and I think perhaps first thing of a morning perhaps it might be possible to wind up the gramophone and stick this on. This is Glazinoff's The Seasons. There may not be seasons on the Desert Island, so providing one's own might be quite useful.

Presenter13:32

Part of the Baccanale from Autumn of Gazanoff's The Seasons, played by the Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Naimie Yervy. Not a lot of opera round here, or indeed in your life, up until this point. When when did you discover it?

Sir Thomas Allen13:45

Oh, this this strange foreign creature. I started to get interested in singing after having sung this Simon the Cellar owner school concert. And then Dennis Wetherly offered me um my physics master, come a singing teacher, suggested I might like to learn something about singing with him, and I accepted. So when everybody else was kicking a football around or hitting a cricket ball, I would be having a half an hour singing lesson. And so the interest grew, and whenever anything musical came into town, I would try to see it then.

Presenter13:56

The physics master.

Speaker 113:57

Uh

Sir Thomas Allen14:17

And Opera for All came to Sunderland, and I heard them give The Barber of Seville and Bohem.

Presenter14:23

Did it ring a bell for you, as it were? Did it?

Sir Thomas Allen14:25

Well, I I I liked it, but I was sixteen and it still seemed an awful long way away.

Presenter14:29

But at some point somebody said, Hey, you should go to the Royal College of Music.

Sir Thomas Allen14:33

Yes, my headmaster got in touch with Arthur Hutchings, the professor of music at Durham University. Nobody really knew what to do with this strange man-boy with the man's voice in the maroon blazer. What on earth is this creature? So I went to Durham University and sang for Arthur Hutchings. And after a few days, I had an invitation to come down to London to sing for Keith Faulkner at the Royal College of Music. And he and another teacher, Merriel Sinclair, heard me.

Speaker 114:45

What on earth?

Sir Thomas Allen15:02

sent me out of the room for ten minutes and didn't debate at me and asked me to come back in and then said Are you sure about this? and I said yes and uh they offered me a place. He asked me in my golf handicap, asked me what else I did, and I said I played golf. And he said yes, Will you've got a place.

Sir Thomas Allen15:16

And that was it.

Presenter15:17

But we're still not into the opera. So is it when you then get to the Royal College of Music?

Sir Thomas Allen15:21

There was an inkling that I might do opera, but I had it explained to me that you really had to learn to sing first. So I spent four years at the Royal College learning to sing, and in about the last three months or whatever it was I was there, there there was an opportunity to sing an opera, though I hadn't studied opera, but they had an emergency and I I sang this opera. I liked it. I quite liked taking part and having the makeup and the costume and all that sort of thing.

Presenter15:42

What was it?

Sir Thomas Allen15:43

It was The Prima Donna by Arthur Benjamin.

Presenter15:46

Did they then say, Well, this is it? That's obviously your career?

Sir Thomas Allen15:49

Yes, yes they did, basically.

Presenter15:50

But but I mean, we we sketch over that four years at the Royal College. I you were a bit of a miserable lump, weren't you?

Sir Thomas Allen16:00

I was initially. Certainly for the first six months, I would say.

Presenter16:04

I cried a lot in telephone boxes. Yes, I did.

Sir Thomas Allen16:06

Yes, I did. I I think they're still trying to get rid of the condensation in them now down in Stockwell where I lived. I think a North East boy dragged away from his roots finds it hard to um to adjust to a a town like this.

Presenter16:19

And an only child who'd been much loved, cosseted even, spoilt even.

Sir Thomas Allen16:22

Cosseted even. Spoilt? Spoilt? My case in point, you know, with onion gravy strained over my lunch every every Sunday lunchtime. Yeah, spoilt is the word.

Presenter16:32

Next piece of music.

Sir Thomas Allen16:34

This is going to come as a complete surprise to anybody that knows me, because my ignorance of pop music is um legendary. But there are certain things that that that resonate. When I hear them I realize that they strike a chord in just the same way that hearing Don Giovanni struck a chord with me many years ago. And this particular song, when I hear it, there's something very basic and animal about it, and I think it will restore the spirits to a very great degree and and get the blood flowing more than anything else on a desert island.

Sir Thomas Allen17:31

Uh

Presenter17:31

Uh

Sir Thomas Allen17:34

Yeah.

Presenter17:35

In sorry

Presenter17:37

Percy Sledge and When a Man Loves a Woman. Do you ever attempt a thing like that? I mean, could you?

Sir Thomas Allen17:43

Uh I could.

Sir Thomas Allen17:44

But it's it's it's a it's a question of being hugely extrovert and yeah, you could act that part out.

Presenter17:48

Yeah.

Presenter17:49

It's very raw, it's it's great.

Sir Thomas Allen17:50

It's raw.

Sir Thomas Allen17:52

The n the nearest I've got to that, I suppose, was a record we made some years ago for the B B C, in fact, that compiled uh Perfect Day. And I had to sing You Just Keep Me Hanging On and um that's been my essay in into pop music this f

Presenter18:05

Yeah.

Presenter18:08

But you've learned a lot along the way. I know, watching and listening to other people, it's how you do it, it's how you all do it, isn't it?

Sir Thomas Allen18:12

We do it.

Presenter18:13

Pavarotti, I came across you early on you you did a Boheme with him. He was obviously Rodolfo. Yes. Was he impressive?

Sir Thomas Allen18:20

Yeah.

Sir Thomas Allen18:22

Yes, he was annoying because he didn't come to rehearsals for three weeks. And we were all ready. I was very ready to criticise. I was.

Sir Thomas Allen18:31

Maybe I was a cynical youth, you know, I'd been at uh Welsh National for three years under their tutelage and then I'd gone to graduated to Covent Garden and I'd been a few years there and learning the trade. And then this man came along and I realized there are certain league tables within within our community as just as there is in the football community and uh this

Presenter18:51

But what was it that that impressed you? Because, I mean, not not noted for his great acting skills, obviously. Was it just the voice?

Sir Thomas Allen18:57

Well, I I that's interesting you say that. I think

Sir Thomas Allen19:01

There are certain voices come along and you think I couldn't give a damn whether they can act or not because and I've sung with many great singers and been very close to them, but there was something about

Sir Thomas Allen19:13

About the way that he produced his voice and the way that his n head s set on his neck and the way that his neck was set into his shoulders.

Sir Thomas Allen19:21

and the whole body becomes something else, and they take a stance on the stage, and this enormous instrument opens up, and it's like listening to the Albert Hall organ, you know, working at full tilt.

Presenter19:32

But it wasn't just the strength of the voice on that occasion, was it? Didn't he physically lift you off your feet?

Sir Thomas Allen19:37

Oh yeah. No, you say he's a he's a strong lad, is Luciano. And um I'm not small myself, but he did actually become empowered enough to lift me off the stage at one point in the third act, just by the shoulders.

Presenter19:48

Amazing.

Sir Thomas Allen19:48

Hmm.

Presenter19:49

But there's a lot of

Presenter19:50

Exciting danger in what you don't. There is in all stage work, of course, but I think maybe particularly in opera, because

Sir Thomas Allen19:52

John Dev.

Speaker 119:53

Yeah.

Sir Thomas Allen19:53

H well

Speaker 119:54

But

Presenter19:57

Because of the nature of the work, you're often filling in at the last moment or rushing in or you say he hadn't turned up for rehearsals. I mean, I sometimes you just haven't got time for rehearsals. Have you ever gone on stage and and and not met before your opposite number?

Sir Thomas Allen20:03

We must

Sir Thomas Allen20:10

The worst one, I suppose, was was at Covent Garden a few years ago. I'd flown overnight from Los Angeles, just about to watch the six o'clock news with a cup of tea, and then I was going to have a sleep, and that was it for the day. And about ten past six

Sir Thomas Allen20:24

The telephone rang, and it was a lady called Terry Jane Griffin, who was company manager at Covent Garden, and she said, Hello, Tom and I said, Hello hello, how are you, Terry? I'm fine. Tom, would you like to sing Figaro? and I said, Yeah, sure, when.

Sir Thomas Allen20:39

And she said in about uh forty five minutes' time.

Sir Thomas Allen20:42

And I thought, Oh, my God Jet lagged, you know, to the tune of eight hours.

Sir Thomas Allen20:47

Turns out that the um the the the Count in that particular show had started to warm up and his voice had disappeared.

Sir Thomas Allen20:55

As voices can at times, and he couldn't continue, and if I hadn't said yes, I think they would have.

Sir Thomas Allen21:01

Had to keep a curtain down and the theatre would have been dark.

Presenter21:04

Yeah.

Sir Thomas Allen21:04

But the adrenaline.

Presenter21:04

But the adrenaline pumps by then.

Sir Thomas Allen21:06

The adrenaline pumps, I I r arrived at the stage door, I was rushed straight to my dressing room, somebody slapped some makeup on, and I was on stage with people I'd never seen before. Well, I had seen them before before. But you got the audience.

Presenter21:14

But you've got the audience in your pocket, haven't you? You're the hero of the hour. Great experience. I mean, that must be terrific.

Sir Thomas Allen21:18

Crazy

Sir Thomas Allen21:19

I mean that must be terrific, huh?

Presenter21:23

Next piece of music.

Sir Thomas Allen21:24

Schubert is very important, obviously, in my life. He was the ultimate song and melody writer. I don't need reminding of the songs. The songs are all in my not all of them, but a lot of them are in my head, buzzing around all the time. So Death and the Maiden, I think, has another lyrical quality that that I would need on the island.

Presenter21:28

Yeah.

Presenter22:42

The opening of Schubert's String Quartet No. fourteen, Death and the Maiden, played by the Lindsay String Quartet. We've been singing your successes there, Tom. What about your disasters? Have you ever been booed?

Sir Thomas Allen22:52

Cool.

Sir Thomas Allen22:54

Famously, on one occasion in Munich a few years ago, I was involved in a production of Fledemaus, which I was quite looking forward to. And the first day of the scheduled productions when I was there, I realized that the young man who was to direct this thing had no idea what he was doing. He was presenting us with a set that was extremely ugly. And each day was a labour of great, great drudgery. And I used to trail myself to rehearsals very reluctantly. And sure enough, five or six weeks later, whenever it was we opened, the audience booed at the end of the first act, the audience booed in the middle and then started shouting in the middle of the second act. And by the time we got to the third act, there was almost a riot, and you know, we couldn't care less by now. We knew that we were on a disaster.

Presenter23:46

But it's interesting how little um power you have in those situations as even as opera stars, it's always down to the producer and director and you're kind of canon fodder in the middle, aren't you?

Sir Thomas Allen23:46

But interesting

Sir Thomas Allen23:56

We are a bit.

Sir Thomas Allen23:58

I can understand why a team of singers is not consulted as to what they might want to do. You can't produce by committee, but I think sometimes

Sir Thomas Allen24:08

A consultation might not be a bad idea.

Sir Thomas Allen24:10

Most singers, in the majority of cases, are never consulted, and so it's a gamble. It really is a gamble.

Presenter24:16

Difficult though, because of course you're usually doing something else and these productions are a long time in the planning and the designing and so on. You've got to hit the ground.

Sir Thomas Allen24:20

And you come into it. After a director and the conductor and the designer and everything have discussed this thing over two, three, four years, whatever it might be, and you are the last person along on at the end of the chain.

Presenter24:31

But you love it all. You you love it so much that I read you you hate the idea of popularizing opera. You don't like the idea that you did.

Sir Thomas Allen24:33

You love

Sir Thomas Allen24:39

No, I don't. No. I that's well, that's not to say that I don't want it to be popular.

Presenter24:41

I that

Sir Thomas Allen24:46

But I don't think we should make excuses for it.

Presenter24:48

But how does the Tom Allen in in Siam today in the North East, who perhaps doesn't have that community culture of singing which you had, how does he find opera?

Speaker 124:57

Uh

Sir Thomas Allen24:57

There's

Speaker 124:57

Shoo had

Sir Thomas Allen24:57

How does

Presenter24:59

Well it was hard enough for you. How does he do it if somebody isn't going out to him saying, look, look, you know, we can put it on the front of the football and

Speaker 124:59

Yeah.

Presenter25:08

You like it there, don't you? Come and see if you like it here.

Sir Thomas Allen25:10

There's a case to be made for that, but I don't think that we need to go overboard in that direction. I mean, I think if there are great communicators in any field, and I was with one last night, for example, I was with a a violinist called Bradley Kresick. Bradley played recently for some kids who'd never heard an orchestra before, who'd never heard live so-called classical music before. And there he was in front of this thing, leading the Vivaldi four seasons, and they were hooked immediately. But as it was described to me, they were hooked in the way that they were hooked by a good football match. It's possible to do that.

Presenter25:44

Joke, is that

Presenter25:45

But the violin is perhaps more accessible than opera for the reasons you say.

Sir Thomas Allen25:49

Well, it's more accessible, I think in this case because he was close to them, and I think if we can get close to people

Sir Thomas Allen25:55

And let them see what's involved and not distance ourselves in the way that theatres are set up sometimes. This is not necessarily popularising it, it's just getting to a wider audience, but popularizing, I think, of in a different way, of making excuses for it. You know, I'm sorry, we're going to have to listen to some opera now. No, no, let's listen to some opera now, because it's fantastic, it really is exciting.

Sir Thomas Allen26:17

It it it feeds the soul rather like a good beer and reaches parts that other arts can't reach. That's what I feel about it.

Presenter26:25

Echo number six.

Sir Thomas Allen26:27

A few years ago I.

Sir Thomas Allen26:30

It was fortunate enough to have two people say to me, You should learn the role of Bechmesse in Meistersinger. So I looked at Bechmesse.

Sir Thomas Allen26:39

And sometime afterwards, having looked and looked and looked and looked and studied, I started to rehearse this piece, and thank God I did. This is Maistersinger, and uh it gives me goose pimples every time I hear the overture to Meistersinger, but I want to hear the more meditative prelude to the third act.

Presenter27:54

Part of the prelude to Act Three of Wagner's The Master Singers of Nuremberg, played by the Bavarian Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Raphael Kubelik. You're um fifty six, Tom. How how long does a good voice last?

Sir Thomas Allen28:05

Mm.

Sir Thomas Allen28:07

Oh, another twenty years.

Presenter28:08

Uh

Sir Thomas Allen28:10

I don't know. It's how long is a piece of string, really?

Presenter28:14

But how carefully do you nurture it now?

Sir Thomas Allen28:16

B.

Presenter28:17

The antipode

Sir Thomas Allen28:17

It's always been nurtured, you know. I don't go to when I go to a football match I don't scream any longer. But I I'm not a delicate flower. I mean, I'd rather leave it lead.

Sir Thomas Allen28:27

as normal an existence as I can. I like going for strolls by the sea, and getting fresh air, rather than wrapping myself up with scarf after scarf, and plugging my ears with cotton wool. I I can't stand that sort of nonsense.

Presenter28:37

Uh

Presenter28:38

But you've talked a lot about enjoying the acting and actually wanting to do some straight acting.

Sir Thomas Allen28:44

Pretty much so, yeah.

Presenter28:44

Is that perhaps what you see yourself doing, i given the offer?

Sir Thomas Allen28:49

Segwaying into that.

Presenter28:50

Segwaying into that as the voice perhaps played, I don't know.

Sir Thomas Allen28:53

I'm not even thinking of it as as going on after my singing career.

Sir Thomas Allen28:58

Rather as combining it. The trouble is that the the idea of pigeonholing is important to folk. You know, so you're either a an opera singer or you're a concert singer. Now we've got rid of a lot of those categories now, so you're just a singer. But to be a singer and an actor is more difficult because you

Presenter29:11

I can't think of an opera singer who's become a straight actor.

Sir Thomas Allen29:15

Um well, Theresa Strath, the American, has has has has bridged both. Willard White, most famously in this country, has of course played Othello as as well as his operatic career. But

Presenter29:27

So that we'll pass on the offers when they write in, okay?

Sir Thomas Allen29:29

Do they write it in the case?

Presenter29:30

Yeah.

Presenter29:31

Echo number seven.

Sir Thomas Allen29:34

It leads naturally into the spoken word. Some years ago, I remember it was a memorial service to Dame Peggy Ashcroft. The great and good of the acting profession were there in Westminster Abbey, giving their all, and it was extraordinary. But they saved the best to last, and the best seemed to me, head and shoulders above anything else that had gone before, and that was John Gilgood.

Presenter29:34

Bleed naturally

Sir Thomas Allen29:57

There was just something extraordinary about his delivery. So, Gail Good, I think I'd want to hear an English voice on this on this desert island, and this is a a Shakspere sonnet.

Speaker 330:07

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

Speaker 330:10

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs that shake against the cold,

Speaker 330:18

Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang

Speaker 330:25

In me thou seest the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west.

Speaker 330:31

Which by and by black night doth take away.

Speaker 330:34

Death's second self that seals up all in rest.

Speaker 330:40

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, As on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death bed whereon it must expire, Consumed by that which it was nourish'd by.

Speaker 330:55

This thou perceiv'st

Speaker 330:57

which makes thy love more strong.

Speaker 331:00

To love that well

Speaker 331:02

which thou must leave

Speaker 331:05

Ere long.

Presenter31:06

Sir John Gilgood, reading Shakspeare's Sonnet No. seventy three

Presenter31:10

I can see you coping on a desert island because you've so often been out there on your own, appearing in the great opera houses of the world, as I said at the beginning, and it's a lonely business, I dare say, when you've got to k kill the time till you're needed at six o'clock in the evening. What do you do? How do you cope with all of that?

Sir Thomas Allen31:21

Killer

Sir Thomas Allen31:24

Absolutely.

Sir Thomas Allen31:28

Oh, I've got my toys.

Sir Thomas Allen31:30

In Munich on that famous occasion when we were being booed, or before we were being booed, I thought I'd go mad during that rehearsal time and I I made I made plastic ships. I bought these little kits uh in a little um shop in Munich and went back and dedicated myself to concentrating on painting, painting, painting in ever finer detail. That was how I dealt with that particular thing. It uh it took my mind off it. I d do a lot of reading. I I like bird watching occasionally I go there, but more

Sir Thomas Allen32:00

than anything these days. I'm drawing and painting. It's become very important to me. I've got an exhibition coming up in Venice.

Presenter32:06

Oh really? Are you s gonna sell'em?

Sir Thomas Allen32:09

That's the idea, which is slightly embarrassing, but uh yes.

Presenter32:13

But strip away all the demand for the performance at the end of the day, or anybody there to buy your pennies. You are completely alone on this desert island. Are you going to be any good?

Sir Thomas Allen32:22

Hmm.

Sir Thomas Allen32:24

I've spent a lot of time on my own over the years. There's an awful lot of time that you are alone as a singer. It's not all first night parties and big hotels and restaurants and what have you. It's not at all like that. Yes, that I I'm quite happy with my own company. I I um I can probably, you know, conjure up images from half closing the eyes and uh and imagine there might be someone there with me or whatever it might be.

Presenter32:49

And and might you sit there and decide that

Sir Thomas Allen32:49

And my ch

Presenter32:52

after all this hard work that you've been describing, that you did in fact justify the gift that was bestowed on you?

Sir Thomas Allen33:01

I don't know whether I'll justify it. I'll I'll try to find the moments in my life that that I thought I made some effect and touched some people. The odd letters that we get are the only evidence really that we have of that. The applause is something, but it's when people stop you in the street and uh thank you for it. And those things mean more than anything, I think.

Presenter33:26

Last record.

Sir Thomas Allen33:28

I'll be on my own on the desert island, so for two reasons I've chosen this last record. One of them is that it's Bach and the St. John Passion. How strong my faith, or whatever faith I might have, is, I'm I'm not sure every day, but there is, I think, perhaps something there that gets tested every now and then. And I think Bach's St. John Passion might be a a reminder of that. And it it also means that there'll be several voices on it that I can tolerate listening to. They're all friends of mine, or have been at one time or another. Some of them are gone now. But I think it'll be rather special to to have them there with me on the island.

Speaker 134:09

With fools that say on

Speaker 134:34

Cursed to them.

Speaker 134:39

I am the sheep.

Speaker 134:43

That's all for

Speaker 334:44

Yeah.

Speaker 134:46

Uh Ah Uh

Sir Thomas Allen34:46

Standing by the

Speaker 134:50

As soon then as he had said, I am with him.

Presenter34:55

I

Speaker 134:58

They all moved backward and fell to the ground.

Presenter35:07

Peter Piers and Gwyn Howell singing the opening recitative, the first appearance of Jesus, in Bach's Saint John Passion, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Britton. If you could only take one of the eight records there that you've chosen, Tom, which one would you take?

Sir Thomas Allen35:22

difficult. But I think the gut failing m and it it is literally a gut failing means it would have to be the Meister singer. As long as I can have the rest of it.

Presenter35:34

What about your book?

Sir Thomas Allen35:36

Oh, you know, this has been so difficult, so difficult. And even as we sit here I could give you five. They they range from Wainwright in the Lake District, I might tell you, through to George Elliott. But I'm going to take

Sir Thomas Allen35:50

Thomas Hardy.

Sir Thomas Allen35:52

Under the greenwood tree

Sir Thomas Allen35:54

And maybe could you add some of the short stories, particularly A Pair of Blue Eyes, just at the end?

Presenter35:59

And what about your luxury?

Sir Thomas Allen36:01

The luxury would have to be, please, some paper, canvas and some paints and brushes and pencils, if that's not too much.

Presenter36:10

Sir Thomas Allen, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Sir Thomas Allen36:13

Great pleasure. Thank you very much, Sue.

Speaker 136:23

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