Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Eight records
It's the earliest piece of music that I remember hearing. My parents were big choral singers and uh even when I was a tiny baby they would take me to rehearsals and when I was old enough to sing soprano uh I started singing in the choruses and Messiah is just something that's been part of my life all these years.
I used to play it on the violin. I studied violin uh for a long time and it was uh a piece I loved very much to be able to play. ... In some ways it's quite faithful to uh Bach sound. I think Bach actually would have liked it.
Attila: E gettata la mia sorte
Well, I chose it uh partly because it has a high B flat at the end, but in a strange kind of way, when I'm listening to myself and there is a uh a passage of time between when I've recorded it and and listening, somehow I'm no longer really listening to me, I'm listening to a voice.
Alexander Nevsky: The Battle on the Ice
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Fritz Reiner
I'm in the chorus of this recording. It's with the Chicago Symphony, Reiner conducting. When that chorus was formed in'58, I was in at the beginning and uh made several recordings.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Fritz Reiner
I chose it two reasons. I love it, I love the music. Uh it's Strauss, uh the Don Juan tone poem. But another reason uh is this is one of the pieces that I conduct in in my orchestral concerts when I do uh what I call a sing conduct date.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, 'Choral': Fourth Movement (Fugue)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Fritz Reiner
Staying home townish as it were, uh Chicago, and knowing the the the men in the Chicago Symphony and having sung with Reiner a lot those five years I was in the Symphony Corps. As a matter of fact I sang his last concert and that was the Beethoven Ninth.
Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem): Sixth Movement (Fugue)
Well, as the list may suggest, I'm uh rather a romantic and uh another favorite piece of mine is the Brahms Requiem, and this is the fugue from the sixth part.
Along with violin and piano I studied string bass uh not to play in a symphony but to play in dance bands. And uh enjoyed that and earned in college earned a lot of money most of my way through college playing in dance bands. And this is a recording of The Hilos.
The keepsakes
The book
A collection of 25 years of New Yorker cartoons
The New Yorker
I think that's something that I could look at again and again and again and again and still get a kick out of because they fracture me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
How did you set about choosing just eight records?
Some of them I chose because I'm involved in, but it's, I suppose, mainly emotional response.
Presenter asks
You grew up working on the farm? But you don't come from a real farming family.
No, not in the the typical sense. My mother was a church choir director, a minister of music, and my father was an amateur singer. And so ... when I got old enough to learn to read music and so forth, I sang in the kids' choirs, a high school choir, adult choir.
Presenter asks
What was the first particularly successful audition, the first important one?
I suppose the first really meaningful career movement type audition was for Boris Goldowski.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it's the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection. It was archived without the music, so although the Castaways choices are introduced, they're not part of this recording. Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.
Speaker 1
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1
And the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
Our castaway this week is a singer, the American baritone Cheryl Milnes. Mr. Milnes, how well could you endure solitude on this island? Having never.
Sherrill Milnes
or been cast away on an island.
Sherrill Milnes
I think uh I could probably endure it, uh, obviously better with uh these records that we will be mentioning. What would you be happiest to have got away from?
Sherrill Milnes
Hmm, perhaps uh the ringing telephone.
Presenter
Uh
Sherrill Milnes
Uh
Presenter
Yeah.
Sherrill Milnes
Yeah. How did you set about choosing just eight records?
Sherrill Milnes
Some of them I chose because I'm involved in, but it's, I suppose, mainly emotional response. Right, where do we start? What's the first one?
Sherrill Milnes
From the Messiah of Sir Thomas Beecham, the chorus All We Like Sheep. It's the earliest piece of music that I remember hearing. My parents were big choral singers and uh even when I was a tiny baby they would take me to rehearsals and when I was old enough to sing soprano uh I started singing in the choruses and Messiah is just something that's been part of my life all these years.
Presenter
Handel's Messiah, All We Like Sheep, conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham. What's your second choice?
Presenter
It's a swingle sing.
Sherrill Milnes
singers uh doing bach
Sherrill Milnes
air from uh suite number three in D, but often called the air for G string when it's played instrumentally. Yes. I used to play it on the violin. I studied violin uh for a long time and it was uh a piece I loved very much to be able to play.
Sherrill Milnes
what the swingle singers do with it. In some ways it's quite faithful to uh Bach sound. I think Bach actually would have liked it.
Presenter
The Swingle Singers Barks Air on the G string. Now back to the beginning of the Sheryl Milne story. You were born in Downers Grove, Illinois, right in the Midwest. That's right. On on a farm, as a matter of fact.
Sherrill Milnes
Yeah.
Presenter
Back to the
Sherrill Milnes
A dairy farm.
Presenter
Dairy farm
Sherrill Milnes
You grew up working on the farm? Sure. We milked cows uh before and after school. But you don't come from a a real farming family.
Sherrill Milnes
No, not in the the typical sense. My mother was a church choir director, a minister of music, and my father was an amateur singer. And so, as I mentioned before about the Messiahs, uh when I got old enough to learn to read music and so forth, I sang in the kids' choirs, a high school choir, adult choir.
Presenter
You went up to to Drake University to to study what?
Presenter
Music Education
Sherrill Milnes
Did you ever start to teach music? Oh, yes. Well, I did when I was getting my master's degree. I was doing a lot of uh teaching and particularly private voice teaching. By that time, uh because of the flexibility of the schedule it allowed me to do a lot of uh engagement.
Presenter
And says I started audition and so forth. What was the first particularly successful audition, the first important one?
Sherrill Milnes
What was that?
Sherrill Milnes
Hm, I suppose the first
Sherrill Milnes
Really meaningful career movement type audition was for Boris Goldowski.
Presenter
Move
Sherrill Milnes
who has a touring company in the United States still going on now. Yes, a touring opera company. Touring opera company, yes. How many nights did you play in each town?
Sherrill Milnes
Mostly one night stands. The casts were were doubled. So we had two people on a part. And you would sing every other performance, sometimes as many as well, a company, sometimes seven, so you might do three or four performances a week.
Presenter
What sort of repertoire did you have?
Sherrill Milnes
Oh, Barber, Tosca, Rigoletto, Bohem, Giovanni, Carmen. The pop operas. Yeah, repertory things, traviata. Uh in fact, with this company, um
Presenter
Right.
Sherrill Milnes
What, five years I toured with him, over a hundred thousand miles and about three hundred performances. This was a wonderful grounding in your job.
Sherrill Milnes
Yes, indeed. It was it was really I was doing in America what many singers uh get by going to Germany and becoming a a fest singer or a resident singer in a in a given house in Germany.
Sherrill Milnes
Well, this is where we break for another disc. What have you chosen next?
Sherrill Milnes
This is from my first Aria album that I did for RCA, uh, from the Verdi opera Actila, E Gettata la Miasorte.
Presenter
And this is the one where you do a rather sensational B-flat at the end.
Sherrill Milnes
Well, I chose it uh partly because it has a high B flat at the end, but in a strange kind of way, when I'm listening to myself and there is a uh a passage of time between when I've recorded it and and listening,
Sherrill Milnes
Somehow I'm no longer really listening to me, I'm listening to a voice. And if I like the voice uh fine, and I listen to it as almost as though it were somebody else, even though obviously I know it's me, it's exciting to hear a good B flat, if in fact it is.
Presenter
An area from Verde is Atila.
Presenter
After five years on tour with the opera company, what was the next step? To New York?
Sherrill Milnes
Yes. In the meantime I'd also auditioned for the major city opera companies, we sort of call them, the the circuit around uh New Orleans and Baltimore's and Pittsburgh's and um Kansas City and so forth. Uh I had sung a few of those, but I suppose the next major step was the New York City opera. Yes.
Presenter
On which role did you make your debut there? Valentin, Faust.
Sherrill Milnes
Uh
Presenter
Uh And it was in that same role that you made your debut at The Metropolitan.
Sherrill Milnes
Right. Uh as a matter of fact that was a a double debut, a bit of a gamble on my part. A fairly well known soprano debuted at the Met uh that same night, uh Mansarratte Caballier. Oh yes. And it was a gamble because
Sherrill Milnes
On the positive side, I knew that all the papers would be there to review her, because she was a well known singer and I was uh the kid, as it were. But as it turned out anyway, we we split the reviews very nicely, and it led
Presenter
To much more. Fine. And since then, of course, you've become a leading figure at the Met. Where was your European debut?
Presenter
Yeah.
Sherrill Milnes
Actually in opera as a concert performance right here in London. I did two performances with the London Opera Society, La Joconda and Andrea Chenier. Yes, that's it. Drury Lane, right, Drury Lane. But my theater debut was in Vienna in a new production of Macbeth with Krista Ludwig Karl Bohm conducting. And that was a very exciting time because as an American we're we're taught or led to believe that everything in Europe is better. And so when you sing in a European house it's more important than singing in an American house.
Speaker 1
Drury Lane, right, Drury Lane.
Speaker 1
With Chris.
Speaker 1
And so when you say
Presenter
Right. It's next October. And uh you're singing the original version, I believe, th th slightly different from the usual one. Verdi wrote uh
Sherrill Milnes
Uh Macbeth in eighteen forty five, I believe. He rewrote it for Paris performances twenty years later and he made quite a few changes in the score. I think all of the changes are better except the ending. And I believe his original ending is is much more dramatic, much more effective. You specialized in the Italian repertoire particularly.
Presenter
I'm not sure if I can do it.
Sherrill Milnes
Yes, I suppose um what? Eighty percent of my operatic career is vanity. Which are your best parts? Which are you happiest of?
Sherrill Milnes
Macbeth is my my favorite part. By favorite, I suppose I mean when I finish singing Macbeth, and perhaps I would add Rigoletto to that.
Sherrill Milnes
Uh I have the greatest feeling of satisfaction.
Sherrill Milnes
However, almost any of the Verdi parts are grateful. And he he wrote for the baritone voice in a very special way. Have you any new roles that you're studying? Yes, actually quite a few. Puritani is later this year at the Met. Tais, which is somewhat of a departure into the French repertoire. After studying that, Atanael is the is the baritone part, the priest. I think it must be the longest part of any baritone opera written. It it's sort of like Iago and Desdaemon are all
Sherrill Milnes
Together in one part. I think it took me ten days to write in the translation.
Presenter
Yeah. Do you find it frustrating? You you're a big, handsome fellow, but you're a barytone, and it's the tenor who usually gets the girl.
Presenter
Yeah.
Sherrill Milnes
That's true. Uh that part doesn't really frustrate me. It's the he has more high notes to sing. The B flat I sang at the end of the octila aria uh obviously is not written, it's written down the octave. And uh the tenor often has the high octave written up in the aria, and the baritone has it written down. So uh that's more frustrating than um than getting the girl. Record number four, what's that going to be? Prokofiev Alexander Nevsky. And it's the part about the battle on the ice. I'm in the chorus of this recording. It's with the Chicago Symphony, Reiner conducting. When that chorus was formed in'58, I was in at the beginning and uh made several recordings.
Presenter
Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. And you.
Presenter
You must have as many opera recordings in the current catalogues as any baritone.
Sherrill Milnes
Well, I suppose so. Maybe more. You'll
Presenter
You have a
Presenter
There's about Thirty. Yes. You've recorded most of your opera house roles, of course. And some brea early Verdi, you've done a complete atila, haven't you? Right, a complete attila, Giovanna d'A.
Sherrill Milnes
Darko
Sherrill Milnes
Which uh is uh Jean d'Arc or um Joan of Arc. I remember the first time I saw Giovanna d'Arco written in Italian.
Sherrill Milnes
And uh my Italian was worse then and I thought, who in the world is Giovanna d'Arco? It took me a while before I realized it was
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Sherrill Milnes
Joan of Arc, and uh Louisa Miller, which is also seldom done.
Sherrill Milnes
Yeah.
Presenter
Performed opera.
Sherrill Milnes
Yeah.
Presenter
You don't believe in in first takes in a recording studio, I'm told.
Presenter
I wonder who told you that? Um
Sherrill Milnes
You've been uh studios, right?
Presenter
And
Sherrill Milnes
Well, actually, I have never found that a first take gets it all together.
Sherrill Milnes
that you get the uh maybe in some cases I have taken some splices, certain maybe high note phrases where your voice was the freshest, but generally you haven't got the word colors and the the mood established.
Presenter
Pushed on a first take. You have made several records of hymns and sacred songs. What about your first love, Oratorio? Do you still sing in Oratorio?
Presenter
Oh yeah.
Sherrill Milnes
I love it. Um I was brought up before I knew opera I I knew the oratorios. Unfortunately
Sherrill Milnes
The oratorio dates are notoriously low paying.
Sherrill Milnes
And uh in a sense I've priced myself out of the oratorial field, which is sad.
Sherrill Milnes
So what I usually do when something that that is interesting or a piece that I love comes along and an opportunity to do it, I will do it as a benefit.
Presenter
Yes.
Presenter
What about recitals? Is that important?
Sherrill Milnes
In your career?
Sherrill Milnes
Recitals require different styles, different language abilities, and you're all on your own. There's no makeup, there's no beards, wigs, costumes. You have to do it with with personal intensity, personal uh well the force of your own personality, facial expressions, quiet singing, uh more expressive singing. I think it forces a singer to keep his voice in better shape than just one area. This this is also a good thing.
Presenter
Cod number five.
Sherrill Milnes
What's that to be?
Sherrill Milnes
Well, I chose it two reasons. I love it, I love the music. Uh it's Strauss, uh the Don Juan tone poem. But another reason uh
Sherrill Milnes
is this is one of the pieces that I conduct in in my orchestral concerts when I do uh what I call a sing conduct date. Um I'll do the Mozart Don Giovanni singing them, of course, and then conduct the Strauss Don Juan. This is also uh Fritz Reiner's recording.
Presenter
Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Richard Strauss's Don Juan.
Presenter
Let's go straight into your next record.
Presenter
Staying
Sherrill Milnes
home townish as it were, uh Chicago, and knowing the the the men in the Chicago Symphony and having sung with Reiner a lot those five years I was in the Symphony Corps. As a matter of fact I sang his last concert and that was the Beethoven Ninth. And this is uh a recording of the of the ninth. We're doing the last part of the final movement, uh the fugue.
Presenter
The Beethoven Ninth Symphony, The Choral, once again the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Rainer.
Presenter
How well could you look after yourself on this island? Obviously you worked on a farm, you're good with your hands. Could you put up some kind of shelter?
Sherrill Milnes
Well, I suppose I could. I don't know how obviously good I am with my hands uh on a farm. You work hard. Um there's knowledge involved. I suppose I could put up some kind of a shelter. We assume there are trees on this island, right?
Presenter
Oh yes, you have to.
Sherrill Milnes
Hahaha
Sherrill Milnes
You just have to pull them down.
Presenter
Yeah.
Sherrill Milnes
Yeah.
Presenter
Would you try to ass
Sherrill Milnes
Escape. Do you know anything about
Presenter
Uh But navigation.
Presenter
Yeah.
Sherrill Milnes
I would try to escape.
Sherrill Milnes
And I don't think that I would
Sherrill Milnes
just do it with a couple of logs put together. I think I would take time and build something uh fairly substantial before I would chance just drifting out into the ocean. I
Presenter
Think that's advisable. Let's get to record number seven. What's that?
Sherrill Milnes
Well, as the list may suggest, I'm uh rather a romantic and uh another favorite piece of mine is the Brahms Requiem, and this is the fugue from the sixth part.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
An excerpt from the Brahms Requiem conducted by Erich Leimsdorf. What's your last disc going to be?
Presenter
I
Sherrill Milnes
I suppose that's quite a switch. Uh along with violin and piano I studied string bass uh not to play in a symphony but to play in dance bands. And uh
Speaker 1
Um
Sherrill Milnes
Enjoyed that and earned in college earned a lot of money most of my way through college playing in dance bands. And this is a recording of The Hilos.
Presenter
The high lows. Did you sing in a quartet like that at any time?
Sherrill Milnes
Yes, uh we had a group in college that did a lot of uh sorority fraternity dances and so forth, and then after we did uh quite a bit of professional work.
Presenter
If you could take just one disk out of that eight, which would it be?
Sherrill Milnes
Probably
Sherrill Milnes
be the the Beethoven Ninth because on the one disc I could get the whole symphony.
Sherrill Milnes
One luxury we're going to allow you to take with you? Yeah. That was hard. I did a lot of homework on that and uh I had to go for uh a food uh which would be sour cream herring.
Presenter
Sour cream herring. Yes, all right. All right, Charlie.
Sherrill Milnes
Well, caviar and champagne aren't aren't my favorite. And I love sour cream herring. And one book, apart from the Bible, Shakespeare and big encyclopedias. One book. Well, this Christmas they published a collection of twenty-five years of New Yorker cartoons. And that's what I would take. I think that's something that I could look at again and again and again and again and still get a kick out of because they fracture me.
Presenter
But caviar
Presenter
Right. 25 years of New Yorker cartoons. And thank you, Cheryl Mills, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you, Roy. Goodbye, everyone.
Presenter asks
Do you find it frustrating? You're a big, handsome fellow, but you're a baritone, and it's the tenor who usually gets the girl.
That's true. Uh that part doesn't really frustrate me. It's the he has more high notes to sing. ... The tenor often has the high octave written up in the aria, and the baritone has it written down. So uh that's more frustrating than um than getting the girl.
Presenter asks
You don't believe in first takes in a recording studio, I'm told.
Well, actually, I have never found that a first take gets it all together. ... Generally you haven't got the word colors and the the mood established.
Presenter asks
What about recitals? Is that important in your career?
Recitals require different styles, different language abilities, and you're all on your own. There's no makeup, there's no beards, wigs, costumes. You have to do it with with personal intensity, personal uh well the force of your own personality ... I think it forces a singer to keep his voice in better shape than just one area.
“Somehow I'm no longer really listening to me, I'm listening to a voice. And if I like the voice uh fine, and I listen to it as almost as though it were somebody else, even though obviously I know it's me, it's exciting to hear a good B flat, if in fact it is.”
“Macbeth is my my favorite part. By favorite, I suppose I mean when I finish singing Macbeth, and perhaps I would add Rigoletto to that. Uh I have the greatest feeling of satisfaction.”
“I would try to escape. And I don't think that I would just do it with a couple of logs put together. I think I would take time and build something uh fairly substantial before I would chance just drifting out into the ocean.”