Margaret Price

Margaret Price0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

Now, Miss Price, we know that you're Welsh. What part of Wales?

Margaret Price0:11

Um well, what used to be Monmouthshire, and which is now Gwent, we are finally part of Wales.

Presenter0:18

Bonnouthshire is indeed.

Margaret Price0:19

It's now Wales.

Presenter0:22

And we've established that you come from a musical family. Did you start taking music lessons yourself very early?

Margaret Price0:28

Ah, I was taught piano.

Margaret Price0:30

But not for very long, because I hated it and wouldn't practise, so my mother and father wouldn't.

Margaret Price0:37

Um give me the money to continue.

Presenter0:40

When did singing come into it?

Margaret Price0:42

Not really until I was fourteen when um in the grammar school we had a music master there who heard me singing one day and tried to persuade me that I could perhaps take up a singing career.

Presenter0:56

You were only fifteen when you won an open scholarship to Trinity College of Music in London.

Margaret Price1:00

Yes.

Presenter1:02

Who looked after you in London?

Margaret Price1:04

Well, I started off in a Methodist hostel for young ladies.

Presenter1:08

Yes, how was that?

Margaret Price1:09

How was that?

Margaret Price1:10

It was a Methodist hostel for young boys.

Presenter1:11

They're comment, yeah.

Margaret Price1:15

And then I had a flat.

Presenter1:16

Yes.

Presenter1:17

Was your grant sufficient to take you through your studies, or did you have to do spare time jobs?

Margaret Price1:21

No. Uh the scholarship paid for tuition alone and because I won a scholarship the county wouldn't give me a grant and so my parents helped out and I also had to do jobs like uh Sunday church services and weddings and things.

Presenter1:39

Yeah.

Margaret Price1:39

Uh

Presenter1:40

In fact, after only two years at college, when you were only seventeen, you made your debut with the recital at the Wigmore Hall.

Margaret Price1:47

Yes.

Presenter1:47

You were a Mezzo then, right?

Margaret Price1:49

I was a medzo then, although in actual fact I sang Shepherd on the rock, which is

Margaret Price1:54

Although it's not written for a mezzo, curiously enough it was written for the Leonora in Beethoven's Fidelia.

Presenter2:01

Mm-hmm.

Margaret Price2:01

But uh

Margaret Price2:03

Even so, it's not a mezzo piece.

Presenter2:06

What did that debut lead to?

Margaret Price2:09

Nothing very much, in actual fact, because I was too young I was only about seventeen, as you've just said.

Presenter2:14

Yes.

Margaret Price2:14

So it didn't really produce anything.

Presenter2:16

Well, you went on to win various prizes. How did you visualize your career in your student days? Was opera your ambition, or were you thinking in terms of the concert platform?

Margaret Price2:26

No, again.

Margaret Price2:27

Um I was really too young to know what I wanted to do.

Margaret Price2:31

And when I left college at nineteen,

Margaret Price2:34

Um I asked my professor, and he said, Well, don't worry, my dear, you'll find your own little niche somewhere in the world.

Margaret Price2:40

So I then went to a friend who gave me a word of advice to perhaps go to John McCarthy.

Margaret Price2:46

Um so I auditioned to him.

Margaret Price2:49

and uh he took me on as one of the Ambrosian singers, and I did about eighteen months of session work.

Presenter2:55

Yes. Uh recorded operas and films that are

Margaret Price2:57

Yes, that's right. We did uh operas for EMI and Decker and things like that and film sessions and B B C.

Presenter3:04

Mm-hmm.

Margaret Price3:04

Stuff.

Presenter3:05

Now appropriately enough you made your operatic debut with the Welsh National Opera Company.

Presenter3:11

What was the road?

Margaret Price3:12

Ah, Carabino.

Presenter3:13

And you sang that again the following year at Cotton Garden under rather exciting circumstances.

Margaret Price3:18

Hm. I was Theresa Berganza's understudy.

Margaret Price3:22

And uh

Margaret Price3:24

She was taken ill on Whit Monday and they couldn't really get anybody else to sing, so they had to put me on whether they want

Presenter3:30

They wanted to or not. How much notice did you get?

Margaret Price3:33

Um, they phoned up in the morning and I had to go on that evening.

Presenter3:37

When was it that you met the man who's to be your partner, your accompanist, in in so many recital tours, James Lockhart?

Margaret Price3:44

Uh, at Cavent Garden, when I auditioned for the understudy of Theresa Berganza. Mhm.

Margaret Price3:50

That particular day he was the rehearsal pianist for these auditions.

Margaret Price3:55

And it was funny really when I look back on it because I sang the most

Margaret Price4:00

stupid aria for me really to have sung, which was Odon Fattale, with terrible Italian.

Margaret Price4:06

And the second aria was Voique Sapete, which I'm afraid Jim and I came to grief over, because he went his way and I went mine. It was far too fast.

Margaret Price4:17

And I mean we just had a, you know, a quarrel about it.

Margaret Price4:21

And um then I had to go back a couple of days later to re-audition to Schulte.

Presenter4:26

The boss

Margaret Price4:27

The boss, yes. And um

Margaret Price4:30

I had a different audition accompanied that day, and it was Bob Keys. So I turned round and I said to him, Well, I hope you're better than the last one, because I mean, he was absolutely terrible, he didn't follow me at all.

Presenter4:39

Tour.

Margaret Price4:40

So I said, Oh, don't worry, dear, I'll follow you.

Presenter4:42

Yeah.

Presenter4:43

Yes, and the man you quarreled with was to become your accomplice for the first time.

Margaret Price4:47

That's right. We've had twelve years now of working together.

Presenter4:50

What other operatic parts did you play?

Margaret Price4:53

Zerlina in Don Giovanni

Presenter4:55

I was next.

Margaret Price4:56

That was the the next row.

Margaret Price4:58

Then later on I sang Constanza at Gleinborn, which again was was um a debatable point as to whether I should sing it, because having started off as a mezzo soprano, I didn't really

Margaret Price5:10

think that I had any high notes in my voice at all, and Constanza goes up to a top D.

Presenter5:15

Yeah.

Margaret Price5:16

But with careful work and things I found that the D was there, so I had very happy memories of singing that role at Gleinborn.

Presenter5:25

Appears in Il Seraglio.

Margaret Price5:26

Yeah.

Presenter5:27

Yes. And then you sang Pamina and the magic flute. That was at the garden.

Margaret Price5:30

That was at the garden, um and then I went on to sing it at San Francisco.

Presenter5:35

Yes.

Presenter5:37

It was, I think, in Cologne, in just four years ago, nineteen seventy one, that you had a success which really made a great difference to your career.

Margaret Price5:44

Yes, that was singing Don Anna in Don Giovanni.

Presenter5:48

Yeah.

Margaret Price5:49

I had done the previous season Cosifantute in uh San Francisco.

Margaret Price5:54

and worked for the first time with Jean Pierre Ponnell.

Margaret Price5:58

and he persuaded me that I should sing Don Anna.

Margaret Price6:02

And so eventually I did, and it was a very great opening for me.