Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Operatic baritone, renowned as one of the greats of the 20th century.
Eight records
La MontanaraFavourite
It's a a song of the Alpine, of the soldier of my country... and with your permission I will take a little bit of my voice with me too, uh and so the record is sung by me.
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23
Vladimir Horowitz, NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini
I like this piano momentos, which is beautiful, exciting.
For Christmas time and also because it is a is a lovely little area that uh bring me back many, many years ago when my mother was used to sing this to us when we were children.
French National Opera Orchestra conducted by Georges Prêtre
I am in in love with this piece of music, and I did a lot of exercise listening to this and co playing as a conductor, jumping here and there. It was a marvel for all the muscles.
Ambrosian Opera Chorus conducted by Riccardo Muti
Everybody will have this record in a desert island to dream, to follow the clouds in the sky, and maybe also to have little tears in their eyes.
Willi Boskovsky conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
when I I play this Strauss I will dance with this blonde [bar of gold] in my arm and dance around the s the sand and the beach.
Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra
William Tell for me, as you know, as I told you, is a... fountain, like a Roman fountain, of a source in which everybody, a lot of musicians, have been drinking a little bit of uh music, of idea.
Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra
because there is the Saint Peter big bells.
The keepsakes
The book
Leslie Greenwood
is beautifully painted, hand painted the reproduction of all the flowers of the world. I don't know if they are all in there. Maybe in the desert island I will find one that is not there and I can add this to the book. But it's a book that I will never be tired of looking.
The luxury
when I I play this Strauss I will dance with this blonde in my arm and dance around the s the sand and the beach. It's useless. It has no value there. But it's beautiful polish, and I can put down in the sand and look this. The reflection of the sun on this. I can play a lot. It would be a nice companion.
In conversation
Presenter asks
When you were small, was there a lot of music in your home?
There was a a good atmosphere, a good love of music, amateurish, naturally. My sister was playing piano, rather well, rather good. My brother was trying to play violin, and then he he he broke the vi the instrument in the in the head of the teacher, and so he stopped the lessons. My father was used to sing when we went up in the mountain for a excursion in the in a holiday in summer. He was used to sing Umbeldivedremo. And when I told him, But Papa, this is an area for a soprano, it doesn't matter, I love it.
Presenter asks
Is it true that at your first school, you were told not to sing in the choir?
Yes, yes. That's true, because uh maybe uh still very young, but my voice was changing, developing, I don't know what happened, and I was out of tune, uh, w I was shouting and the poor maestro, teacher, uh, walking around the the class, he stopped in front of me, say, You just have to mime and not produce any sound. So that was my big debut in the chorus, the school.
Presenter asks
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy nine, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
On our desert island this week is the great operatic baritone Tito Gobby.
Presenter
Commendatori, the first question. Did you find it very difficult to choose just eight records to take with you?
Tito Gobbi
No, no, but uh certainly there are only eight, and there are maybe another couple of hundred that I would like to take with me, because I think and I believe in a desert island I will uh really
Tito Gobbi
find the time to play the records. Do you what I don't do in my life. Even some of my own records I have never played. What's the first one you've chosen?
Tito Gobbi
The first one is La Montanara. It's a a song of the Alpine, of the soldier of my country.
Tito Gobbi
in the north of Italy, in Bassano del Grappa and with your permission I will take a little bit of my voice with me too, uh and so the record is sung by me.
Speaker 2
We heavenly door round.
Tito Gobbi
Caraspre piaked ultamti kodam.
Presenter
La Montanara. So you were born in Busana di Grappa.
Tito Gobbi
Bassano del Grapa, yes. It's a lovely romantic medieval uh town with a beautiful river and a Maulus mountain all around. And the grappa is the mountain number one, very historical. And that's give the name to my home town.
Presenter
When you were small was there a lot of music in your home?
Tito Gobbi
There was a a good atmosphere, a good love of music, amateurish, naturally. My sister was playing piano, rather well, rather good. My brother was trying to play violin, and then he he he broke the vi the instrument in the in the head of the teacher, and so he stopped the lessons. My father was used to sing when we went up in the mountain for a excursion in the in a holiday in summer. He was used to sing Umbeldivedremo. And when I told him, But Papa, this is an area for a soprano, it doesn't matter, I love it. He was right.
Presenter
There's a story that at your first school, when the choir appeared at a concert, you were told not to sing.
Tito Gobbi
Yes, yes. That's true, because uh maybe uh still very young, but my voice was changing, developing, I don't know what happened, and I was out of tune, uh, w I was shouting and the poor maestro, teacher, uh, walking around the the class, he stopped in front of me, say, You just have to mime and not produce any sound. So that was my big debut in the chorus, the school.
Presenter
In fact, your voice was discovered on a tennis court I believe.
Tito Gobbi
Yes. Yes, we were playing tennis and I was singing a very famous song at this time, Ama Mi Basio Mi Gompazione, and the owner of the villa where we used to go all the young boys called me. He was a musician and a and a composer himself himself and um the Baron Zanqueta and a great uh musicologist also. And he listened to my voice, he decided I was buried. And then he suggested my father to make me study singing, and my father said yes, but first he must be a lawyer because I want him to be sure, to be safe. I have not much confidence in the career, in artistic career. He was quite a solid man in business.
Presenter
But you had to go and and get an expert opinion so that your father could
Tito Gobbi
I'm not sure.
Presenter
Uh
Tito Gobbi
Oh, yes, we went in Rome where I I was uh lucky enough to meet my maestro, Giulio Crimi. He was a great tenor in the Ten Caruso's time. We took me in the garden and I called for Toluzza, Mathilde Tilde Toluzza, I call her, and she answered from the top of the tree, Will you come down please and play piano for uh this young boy here? And so she jumped down the trees and uh I met my wife. What happened at that audition?
Tito Gobbi
This audition was good, and the master said, Okay, said to my father, I can't promise anything. The sound is good, still very young, uh the boy looks nice, but uh I don't know him, I want to study him a little more closely, and in three months I will tell you if it is good to go on with a singing lesson or better to have a lawyer in your house.
Tito Gobbi
And after three months, he wrote to my father, said, Okay, I think we can go on. It will be a baritone, hmm.
Presenter
Uh what's your second record? What's next on the list?
Tito Gobbi
I thought Tchaikovsky concert number one, played by Horowitz. I like this piano momentos, which is beautiful, exciting.
Presenter
Part of the last movement of the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto, Horowitz, with the N B C Symphony Orchestra conducted by Toscanini.
Presenter
What was your first appearance on the operatic stage?
Tito Gobbi
My first appearance was a a rather funny one, and my my debut in La Scala, which was a
Tito Gobbi
A disasters. They asked me to replace a man who was singing few words, to sing only a few phrases, but nobody told me when.
Tito Gobbi
So I enter on stage and I start singing when the basso Tancredi Passero was a at the half away of Ick's big cadenza. I interrupted his area, it destroyed everything. That was my my real first debut. But then I went uh in a in the most serious uh business. I did Traviata in Roma and then at the Royal Opera House in Rome I did Donne Cudiosa by Bol Ferrari that I learned in one day. Uh but I did quite a good job in one day only.
Speaker 1
In a row
Presenter
I did quite a good job.
Presenter
Yes, you are a quick study. You can learn very quickly. Yes, very quick. At the beginning of your career you got uh a very profitable job in a film by showing you could turn somersault.
Tito Gobbi
Yeah.
Tito Gobbi
Yeah. Yes, I did uh the the film um Econdotieri. That's you mean. Yes, I did film Econdottieri with Louis Tranka and uh there were, I think, twenty young fellows who were looking for this work.
Tito Gobbi
and I was supposed to jump over a table to catch a guitar in the in the hand and start playing and singing.
Tito Gobbi
And I did with a beautiful jump all over the table and so and I was accepted. I was uh also an acrobat acrobatic at this time. And uh that was the beginning of my real uh career in the what do you call it, in the show business. Let's have your third record. Yeah. The third record is still an act, the Christmas song, with the children chorus.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
What
Presenter
This is what? For Christmas time? You're going to say this for Christmas?
Tito Gobbi
For Christmas time and also because it is a is a lovely little area that uh bring me back many, many years ago when my mother was used to sing this to us when we were children. And she had a lovely little voice and she was singing this beautifully, and I still remember her voice.
Presenter
Steelenacht, conducted by Carl Forster.
Presenter
When did you first sing Scarpier in in Tosca, perhaps your your best known one?
Tito Gobbi
My first performance at Scarpia go back to ninety
Tito Gobbi
Forty, forty one, I don't I don't remember properly now. But anyway, I sang two performances of uh Tosca in Rieti, n a small city with a beautiful theater in Italy, for five hundred liras, which is a one third of a pound.
Tito Gobbi
Two performers, but that was enough to pay some.
Tito Gobbi
Good dinner after the performance.
Presenter
We were talking about the early days of the war. In fact, during those war years you were singing for the first time some of your your big roles Iago, Figero, so on.
Tito Gobbi
Fiero.
Tito Gobbi
Yes, m my big repertoire.
Tito Gobbi
I came out uh s I started singing this uh in nineteen forty, forty one, forty two uh and forty three practically, yes.
Presenter
German occupation, you you you certainly
Tito Gobbi
We have done very little during the German occupation, but because everybody tried to run away. In effect, I I had a terrific experience, frightening, because we decided not to perform Tosca for the German the army and so on. And they said, Okay, if you don't come, we come and we pick you up. Don't try to run away. So we have have been obliged to perform. Benjamin Ogili, Maria Canilia, who died just a few weeks ago. Myself, I was Scarpia. The conductor was DeFabrizzis.
Speaker 2
Do we have?
Speaker 2
Maybe
Tito Gobbi
And we had
Tito Gobbi
Machine gun
Tito Gobbi
touching our shoulder,
Tito Gobbi
All the way
Tito Gobbi
And when we walk inside the stage to perform,
Tito Gobbi
We had nine.
Tito Gobbi
machine gun all over the winds, pointed against us.
Presenter
That's just the way to get a good performance.
Tito Gobbi
And the conductor had two gun machines in the orchestra because they thought that maybe we will shout something in the microphone because it was broadcast all over the Germany and for the Deutsche Wehrmacht. So that was one of the little things which happened during the war. We had some terrible period. We had a nine month in Rome which was really hunger. My wife and myself, we have been eating lawn grass that I cut. I went out and without hiding myself, I cut with a little knife that I still c carry. I have this at home. Little knife cutting grass, put in the pocket, and we boil this, and that was our food.
Tito Gobbi
Can you imagine? It was impossible. And because of what we had, it it was necessary to give it to the to the child, our daughter.
Tito Gobbi
Let's get back to music. What do we have to have?
Presenter
Yeah, that's better.
Tito Gobbi
Next one will be what? A a a very exciting one, BZ Carmen, the overture.
Tito Gobbi
I am in in love with this piece of music, and I did a lot of exercise listening to this and co playing as a conductor, jumping here and there. It was a marvel for all the muscles. Feel great after.
Presenter
Some music to conduct on a desert island, the French National Opera Orchestra conducted by Georges Poitre, the overture to Carmen.
Presenter
And when the war was over, you could at last start your travels as an international. Yeah, it's finally here.
Presenter
What was the first part you sang at Covent Garden?
Tito Gobbi
Oh, the Coangarden. Coangarden was in fifty when I came with La Scala.
Tito Gobbi
And then Silveri was ill and I took his part also in Falstaff. But then, after this visit of La Scala, I was in a concert tour in England.
Tito Gobbi
And I was in uh I think in Manchester with my car driving all over England and singing and meeting this marvelous audience, which is uh unique, the best in the world. And I received a telephone call by David Webster. He says, Mr. Gobi, please, we need you, will you come and sing tonight?
Tito Gobbi
The basketball.
Tito Gobbi
I say, Sir, with great pleasure, but I I am here, so how can I Oh, you drive fast, police will understand, drive fast, come here, we need you. So I jumped in the car and we I drew to London, was stopped twice by the police, and police very kindly when I told them what it was. They also they escort me out of the city. And so I arrived here in time for the performance. I had just
Tito Gobbi
few minutes to put on the makeup and and to dress up. You hadn't seen the production? No, and I didn't know. That was the Swedish version and I was used to seeing the Boston one. Okay, then I went on and Saddle at the end I was taking out my dagger, my knife, to stab the tenor when somebody stopped my arm.
Tito Gobbi
And say, No, no, we're shooting here. Here is the gun, is the pistol And he gave me a pistol Okay, then I shoot from distance boom And that was it. Anyway, I was very happy to help the theatre and the theater was very grateful for me because the best part of my career it took place in this gorgeous theater or Covent Garden.
Presenter
Epistle.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Another record, number five we got to.
Tito Gobbi
We have number five, Verdi Nabucco, Vapenciero. Everybody will have this record in a desert island to dream, to follow the clouds in the sky, and maybe also to have little tears in their eyes.
Speaker 2
What is the world?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
The chorus Vapenziero from Verdis Nabucco, the Ambrosian opera chorus conducted by Riccardo Mutti.
Presenter
In recent years you have done a great deal of production.
Presenter
When did you start? What where did you start?
Tito Gobbi
I start officially.
Tito Gobbi
in Chicago and then immediately after Chicago here at the Covent Garden. David Webster decided I have to do Simone Bocanegra.
Tito Gobbi
But I have one condition that I take care of everything.
Tito Gobbi
So it was a bigger responsibility. And I did it with joy, shaking a little bit, trembly, but that's put me
Tito Gobbi
more in concentration in my work, in my job, and I think the work was good. But immediately as the n the notice came over that uh I was going to produce Simone at the Royal Opera House Golden Garden, Chicago offered me to do it in Chicago one and a half months ahead, before that.
Tito Gobbi
So I accept this with a enormous pleasure and joy because it was the the practical the dress rehearsal for the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden. And David told me, You know, that's a very rich Opera House. We had five dress rehearsals in Chicago before you came here.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Tito Gobbi
And so I start as a producer and I did a lot uh in uh in London only this, I think. I'm sorry, uh maybe I come back to do something. I hope before it's too late. But uh uh I did a lot in uh in America, in Chicago, the Metropolitan, in the Julia School, in San Francisco, in in Italy, in Paris, in uh Swiss, etc., in Berlin, Germany.
Presenter
You love to draw and paint. Do you sometimes design as well?
Tito Gobbi
Yes, in effect y I designed, I did the decor and I realized also the decor for Don Giovanni in Lisbon. And he it was quite good. It was a lot of fantasy, but imagination, but uh and very low cost because they didn't pay me for that.
Presenter
Record number six.
Tito Gobbi
Record number six is Straus.
Tito Gobbi
And uh I choose this because I don't know, do you know already what is the the useless uh luxury things that I will take with me?
Presenter
No, you you haven't told me yet.
Presenter
Yes, by all means.
Tito Gobbi
It will be a gold bar.
Tito Gobbi
a big piece of polished gold. What you gonna do with it? Uh when I I play this Strauss I will dance with this blonde in my arm and dance around the s the sand and the beach. It's useless. It has no value there.
Tito Gobbi
Because it's not commercial.
Tito Gobbi
But it's beautiful polish, and I can put down in the sand and look this.
Tito Gobbi
The reflection of the sun on this. I can play a lot. It would be a nice companion.
Presenter
Yes, you could melt it and mold it. You could Oh, that's a bit too too much.
Tito Gobbi
Too complicated. Too complicated. I will keep it as it is. Right. But I will dance the walls with it.
Presenter
Too complicated.
Presenter
The Blue Danube, Fiddy Boskovki conducting the Viela Philharmonic Orchestra, music for dancing to with a bard of gold.
Speaker 2
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Presenter
Now you've recently written your autobiography, My Life.
Tito Gobbi
Yeah.
Presenter
Live. Did you enjoy that?
Tito Gobbi
Immensely.
Tito Gobbi
I I was reluctant in beginning of this, but that was already and always in my mind. And I thought one day, one day, one day,
Tito Gobbi
And finally one day I started writing down something.
Tito Gobbi
Man, I thought. Then I was captured by the idea of going on.
Tito Gobbi
And uh thanks to the the diary that my wife had been keeping in order since the first performance, the first little concert in a private house that I made fifty years ago or something like this, forty five years ago, I found all my life
Tito Gobbi
And we just walk back and we start from the beginning and it was a tremendous experience. And I think it is amusing. It is I think it's very honest. It's uh nice. Good. Record number.
Presenter
Uh
Tito Gobbi
Yeah. Yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Tito Gobbi
On record number seven, we have Rossini, William Tell, Overture. William Tell for me, as you know, as I told you, is a
Tito Gobbi
A fountain, like a Roman fountain, of a source in which everybody, a lot of musicians, have been drinking a little bit of uh music, of idea.
Tito Gobbi
And so I think he is uh one of the greatest genius.
Presenter
An excerpt from the Overture William Tell by Rossini.
Presenter
Artioro Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
Presenter
Now, we've dumped you unceremoniously on this desert island. Could you look after yourself?
Tito Gobbi
Oh, yes.
Presenter
Have you done any fishing?
Tito Gobbi
Oh, I love fishing and I am sure I can build up something to fish properly. And I am sure I will build also a house on the tree.
Presenter
Yeah.
Tito Gobbi
Good.
Presenter
Would you try to escape?
Tito Gobbi
Good.
Tito Gobbi
I don't know now, but maybe after how long do you want me to stay there? Well, that's up to you.
Presenter
Well, that's up to you.
Tito Gobbi
Uh
Presenter
Uh
Tito Gobbi
The Uh
Presenter
Uh-huh.
Tito Gobbi
Maybe one day, yes, I think. I'm I'm born and I've been living surrounded by humanity and certainly I will miss this. Uh maybe one day I will come back.
Presenter
Let's have your last record.
Tito Gobbi
The last record is Respig Festa Romane from the Secondo Tempo, because there is the Saint Peter big bells.
Presenter
The Jubilee from Respighi's Festi Romani, once again Artioro Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. If you could take just one disc out of the eight, which?
Tito Gobbi
Oh, I maybe sound rude and antiparticle, but I will take with me La Montanara with my voice.
Presenter
Right. And you've told us about your luxury, that's your bar of gold. Yes. One book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare already on the island, and we don't admit being excited about it.
Tito Gobbi
I believe I think that a good book that you can read and look again and again and again is uh The Flowers of the World.
Tito Gobbi
A book
Tito Gobbi
By Leslie Greenwood.
Tito Gobbi
is beautifully painted, hand painted the reproduction of all the flowers of the world. I don't know if they are all in there. Maybe in the desert island I will find one that is not there and I can add this to the book. But it's a book that I will never be tired of looking.
Tito Gobbi
How are breeding?
Presenter
And thank you, Tito Gobby, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.
Tito Gobbi
Thank you very much for asking me to come be here.
Presenter
Goodbye everyone.
Speaker 1
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Was your voice discovered on a tennis court?
Yes. Yes, we were playing tennis and I was singing a very famous song at this time, Ama Mi Basio Mi Gompazione, and the owner of the villa where we used to go all the young boys called me. He was a musician and a and a composer himself himself and um the Baron Zanqueta and a great uh musicologist also. And he listened to my voice, he decided I was buried. And then he suggested my father to make me study singing, and my father said yes, but first he must be a lawyer because I want him to be sure, to be safe.
Presenter asks
What happened at that audition [with Giulio Crimi]?
This audition was good, and the master said, Okay, said to my father, I can't promise anything. The sound is good, still very young, uh the boy looks nice, but uh I don't know him, I want to study him a little more closely, and in three months I will tell you if it is good to go on with a singing lesson or better to have a lawyer in your house.
Presenter asks
What was your first appearance on the operatic stage?
My first appearance was a a rather funny one, and my my debut in La Scala, which was a... disasters. They asked me to replace a man who was singing few words, to sing only a few phrases, but nobody told me when. So I enter on stage and I start singing when the basso Tancredi Passero was a at the half away of Ick's big cadenza. I interrupted his area, it destroyed everything. That was my my real first debut.
Presenter asks
What was it like performing [Tosca] during the German occupation?
We have done very little during the German occupation, but because everybody tried to run away. In effect, I I had a terrific experience, frightening, because we decided not to perform Tosca for the German the army and so on. And they said, Okay, if you don't come, we come and we pick you up. Don't try to run away. So we have have been obliged to perform... And we had... machine gun... touching our shoulder... All the way... And when we walk inside the stage to perform... We had nine... machine gun all over the winds, pointed against us.
“We had a nine month in Rome which was really hunger. My wife and myself, we have been eating lawn grass that I cut. I went out and without hiding myself, I cut with a little knife that I still c carry. I have this at home. Little knife cutting grass, put in the pocket, and we boil this, and that was our food.”
“It will be a gold bar... a big piece of polished gold... when I I play this Strauss I will dance with this blonde in my arm and dance around the s the sand and the beach. It's useless. It has no value there... But it's beautiful polish, and I can put down in the sand and look this... The reflection of the sun on this. I can play a lot. It would be a nice companion.”
“I'm born and I've been living surrounded by humanity and certainly I will miss this. Uh maybe one day I will come back.”