Adele Leigh

Speaker 30:00

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 nineteen eighty eight, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:30

Writing about our castaway, one critic said she book paid to the myth that to be good a soprano had to look like a Hoffnon cartoon. In the fifties she was the glamorous golden voice singer who became the youngest member of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. In the early 60s she became a television star with shows like all kinds of music and appearances on Eric Robinson's Music for You. In the late 60s and 70s she became the toast of Vienna, where she joined the Vienna Folks Opera. She married a diplomat, retired from singing until last year when she returned to the West End stage in the current successful production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies. She is Adele Lee.

Presenter1:07

I don't

Presenter1:08

How did you come back to to England this this last time? What made you return?

Adele Leigh1:13

Well, it was because my husband had died two years ago.

Adele Leigh1:17

And I was feeling very sad and in Vienna and

Adele Leigh1:21

afraid to come back to England because, well, you know why. I I used to come on holidays to see friends and that was lovely. But when I had the phone call from my agent who said Cameron McIntosh is interested in having you for Heidi Schiller,

Adele Leigh1:37

In Follies, I said To sing again on the stage, you mean? And he said, Yes. So I said, I couldn't do that. I'm I'm too old now to go back on the stage. And he said, Oh, don't worry, the party's of a very old lady

Adele Leigh1:51

Yeah.

Speaker 31:51

Baby, are you silly?

Adele Leigh1:52

Yeah.

Adele Leigh1:53

So um they persuaded me to fly over and I met them all and they seemed to be confident of the fact that that I could do it, so I I had a go.

Adele Leigh2:03

And I must say I don't regret one single minute.

Presenter2:06

Were you frightened?

Adele Leigh2:07

Yes.

Presenter2:08

Hmm.

Adele Leigh2:08

I was terrified.

Presenter2:10

Yeah.

Presenter2:11

And what were the fears mainly? I mean, was it that you you'd forgotten how to do it or your voice had gone over?

Adele Leigh2:15

Well, no, no, no, no, no. It was the the question of would they still remember me? You know, I haven't sung on the English stage for years and many, many years, I wouldn't like to say how many. But uh on the first night I remember standing there and and just standing and when the applause started after one kiss I

Adele Leigh2:37

I just couldn't believe it, and of course I came off and burst straight into tears. But I was very, very touched, and I've still got a lovely

Adele Leigh2:46

nice following here, which is uh very rewarding.

Presenter2:50

Let's have a first choice of record, and what's that to be?

Adele Leigh2:53

But that's to be Grace Moore singing One Night of Love because that was the film that my mother took me to see when I was a very little girl, and I said I'm going to sing like that one day.

Presenter3:37

One Night of Love Song by Grace Moore

Presenter3:39

I don't know, you said there that in fact uh you you saw that first of all in a in a movie house and you are, without going into the business of age, I must say you've seemed a glamorous lady still, but you do belong, like myself, to what would we call the cinema generation, don't you? Yes. Reared in cinema houses, yes. Was it was it a huge influence on your life as a child?

Adele Leigh3:53

Yeah. Reared in cinema.

Adele Leigh3:57

Oh yeah.

Adele Leigh3:58

Oh yes, yes, Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland. I used to go to the cinema at twelve o'clock.

Adele Leigh4:04

with a packet of sandwiches and come out at six.

Presenter4:08

And what about this?

Adele Leigh4:09

in Maribon.

Presenter4:10

Uh-huh. And you were born there? Yes. And what what about your parents? Were they musical?

Adele Leigh4:11

Yeah.

Adele Leigh4:14

No, they were business people. In fact, they were very, very shocked when I uh decided to well, when I saw Grace Moore, I said, I've got to do that, I've got to do that. So my mother said, Well, if you're going to be a singer, you're going to be a good singer.

Adele Leigh4:26

And we've got to get you properly trained, you know. So I was taken to teachers and

Adele Leigh4:31

In fact, um I did then go to New York.

Presenter4:36

But this we're jumping ahead a bit now.

Adele Leigh4:37

Yes, which I'm thinking very much is it. Yes, I went to Rada, yes. And then of course I said I wanted to be an opera singer.

Presenter4:40

Yeah.

Adele Leigh4:44

And so my mother said, Well, you've got to learn to act and oh my goodness, am I pleased I went there? Because so many opera singers don't know how to move on the stage, but now, in the era we're now in, they're all like movie stars.

Adele Leigh5:00

And uh I think that's terribly important. You know, you you must learn to move, you must

Adele Leigh5:06

I mustn't just lift up one arm and then lift up another arm and and sing an aria. People don't want that any more.

Presenter5:12

But you're you're obviously very determined then from I mean, in fact you're determined. Did you ever have another ambition in your life? I mean it was all music, was it?

Adele Leigh5:20

Yes, why I wanted this

Presenter5:21

Two. Uh

Adele Leigh5:21

Yeah.

Presenter5:21

Mm. So how did how did New York come into the scheme of things then?

Adele Leigh5:25

Well, because my mother was in New York. She was a businesswoman and she went to New York and I followed her because I'd heard of a wonderful school called the Juilliard School.

Adele Leigh5:35

And uh

Adele Leigh5:36

I thought, well, I mean, I'll never get in there, but I can try. And I went and I did an entrance test, and I was accepted, fortunately. I think they liked the idea of my being British, you know, Americans British. It was that time after the war. And that was where I met a woman who had a great influence on my singing career. That was Maggie Tate. I met her.

Adele Leigh5:58

In New York she was teaching at the Juilliard, and I got on so well with her.

Adele Leigh6:03

And she said, But I'm going back to England. So I said, Well

Adele Leigh6:07

I'll follow you. And it all fitted in beautifully, like a

Presenter6:11

But what kind of woman was she?

Adele Leigh6:12

Oh, she was a

Adele Leigh6:14

A very, very strange person. I loved her. She was the kind of person you either loved or hated.

Presenter6:19

What was strange about her?

Adele Leigh6:21

Well, she she used to do the oddest things. I mean, she'd uh she'd be very straight with you.

Adele Leigh6:28

She was born in Wolverhampton, you know.

Adele Leigh6:30

And

Adele Leigh6:32

They they tell you straight. You know, I would sort of sing an aria and make lots of glissandos all over the place, like Uh and she said, Stop sounding like a cheap plate of spaghetti. If you want to learn to sing, you've got to learn to sing the way Mozart would have intended you to.

Adele Leigh6:48

So

Adele Leigh6:49

I liked that about her, and I learned an awful lot about her, and I miss her very much. She was a wonderful woman. She was also a very good friend.

Adele Leigh6:57

I mean, I'd always go to her when I had

Adele Leigh7:00

Problems, romance, problems, and cry on her shoulder.

Adele Leigh7:04

She'd say to me

Adele Leigh7:05

Music never lets you down, my dear girl music will never let you down.

Presenter7:10

Enlightenment.

Adele Leigh7:11

I'm like, Uh

Presenter7:13

Another choice of record, we can guess what's coming.

Adele Leigh7:15

Yes, Maggitate singing Sime Verza V desle by Reynaldo Hahn, If My Songs Only Had Wings.

Speaker 37:25

Red O Pierce A Feet Um

Speaker 17:34

Or

Speaker 37:55

Maybe

Presenter8:24

If my songs only had wings sung by Dame Maggie Tay.

Presenter8:28

Adele, you you mentioned the the influence that uh De Maggie had on your life. Was it the most single profound influence, do you think, in in your musical career?

Adele Leigh8:36

Well, yes, she gave me the impetus to go on and

Adele Leigh8:40

She was in the audiences when I sang my first big parts at Covent Garden, my Paminas and Susannas.

Adele Leigh8:46

And uh yes, I think she really was a great influence.

Presenter8:50

Attend us now moved to Covent Garden, because you were very young, weren't you when you started there?

Adele Leigh8:53

Very. It was a cheek, really, for me to go and audition. But actually, I auditioned for David Webster in New York.

Adele Leigh9:02

In fact, he had come over to New York to find young talent because there are so many wonderful voices in America.

Adele Leigh9:10

And he was holding auditions at the town hall. I never forget that. And somebody said, why don't you go along? You're British.

Adele Leigh9:18

So I went along and I sang something for him, and at the end of the audition, you can only do this when you're eighteen years old, can't you? I walked to the front of the podium and I said, Please, Mr Webster, do engage me. I'm British and I do want to come back to England. Really what I wanted to do was come back because Maggie Tate was going back.

Adele Leigh9:36

And uh

Adele Leigh9:37

Uh it all worked out. He's he gave me a small part contract.

Presenter9:41

And what was that there's a small part days. What was a big break in comic on?

Adele Leigh9:45

Well, that was when a German singer called Elizabeth Grummer couldn't come over to do the performance if she had the flu or something.

Presenter9:45

Uh

Adele Leigh9:53

And as Karl Renkel said to me, Can you sing Pamina?

Adele Leigh9:58

And I said

Adele Leigh10:00

Yes, of everybody. You know, I had it in my repertoire and I was standing at the side of the stage and listening to all the other Paminas and I said yes and so he said well come to my room and and he took me through the aria and he said I'd like you to go on in ten days and sing that Well, I was thrilled.

Adele Leigh10:17

I was a young girl of about twenty or twenty one and

Adele Leigh10:21

And Pamina is supposed to be a young girl, but I mean it is you you do those things when you're twenty, you don't think about them.

Presenter10:28

Sorry, but was it the the the greats of Shobi's story, the overnight success, The Star is Born, was that what happened?

Adele Leigh10:34

Well, in a way it mu it I wasn't actually born it wasn't a star was born with me, no. I did have a big success and I was very, very grateful and Maggie Tate said, Now you must be humble. You can't just sort of now say, Now I've made it because no, you don't do that in the opera business. You go on the next night and sing a small part. The only thing is that the next night came and I was supposed to be singing Countess Ciprano in Rigoletto.

Adele Leigh10:58

But I sat in my living room in St. John's Wood when I was where I was then living, and I forgot.

Adele Leigh11:06

I forgot that I was on at Coffin Garden, and they rang me, and they said, Well, I suppose now you've had a success as Parmina, you don't want to sing small parts, and I was terribly embarrassed. And one of the chorus went on and did it, and I paid her five pounds. When I went in the next day, it was a lot of money then.

Adele Leigh11:24

Anyhow, it was a terrible moment for me. But I did then fortunately they were very nice, and I did go on to sing bigger parts and bigger parts, but that was a very, very, very embarrassing moment.

Presenter11:36

Another choice of record, please.

Adele Leigh11:38

Well, I think on my island I'm going to get rather

Adele Leigh11:41

Lonely and depressed, so I'm going to choose an old coward singing Let's Do It.

Speaker 111:48

He said the Belgians and Greeks do it

Speaker 111:51

Nice young men who sell antiques do it let's do it let's fall in love

Speaker 111:58

Monkeys, whenever you look

Speaker 112:01

Do it.

Speaker 112:02

Alicon and King Farouk, do it, let's do it, let's fall in love.

Speaker 312:07

Love

Speaker 112:09

Luella Parsons can't quite do it.

Speaker 112:15

But she's so highly strung.

Presenter12:18

No card, let's do it and recorded of course that famous record recorded in Las Vegas.

Presenter12:23

I don't know let's go back now to this young girl, twenty-one or so, down in Collin Garden, and um.

Presenter12:29

Now becoming a a name in in opera. Was it very glamorous?

Adele Leigh12:33

No, it was not a glamorous life at all. The glamorous life came much later. It was jolly hard, you know, because being a young opera singer at Covent Garden, you you have to continue to work and practise. Everybody seems to think that opera singers

Adele Leigh12:49

Go out after the performance and drink champagne at the Savoy. I mean, it's nothing like that. It literally is not talking too much.

Adele Leigh12:59

That really, really killed me because I love to talk. You know, just keeping.

Adele Leigh13:05

on an even keel, not drinking too much, a glass of wine occasionally.

Adele Leigh13:10

And smoke was taboo.

Adele Leigh13:12

And smoke is still taboo. I still don't like cigarette smoke around me, but I mean I put up with it. It's it's not so bad as it was then.

Presenter13:20

Yes, you obviously have to keep fit because it's very physically taxing. But th is that something that that stays with you through throughout your life? Are you still very aware of your physical condition?

Adele Leigh13:23

That's right.

Adele Leigh13:29

Well, I'm a little bit of a health fiend. I eat healthy food.

Presenter13:32

And what about exercise? Do you work out and that sort of thing?

Adele Leigh13:34

Yes, once or twice a week I work out uh in a gymnasium.

Presenter13:39

You guys have another choice of record.

Adele Leigh13:40

Yeah.

Adele Leigh13:41

Eartha Kitt singing I'm an Old Fashioned Girl. Why I love the lyrics.

Speaker 313:49

I'm just an old fashioned girl with an old fashioned mind Not sophisticated, I'm the plain and simple kind I want an old fashioned house with an old fashioned fence And an old fashioned millionaire I'd like a plain simple car, a series catalat Long enough to have a bowling alley in the back I want an old fashioned house with an old fashioned fence And an old fashioned

Presenter14:22

At the kid singing Old Fashioned Girl.

Presenter14:24

Adeli, can we move on now to this point where you became uh in the sixties in Britain, in the early sixties, you became a a big television star, didn't you?

Adele Leigh14:33

Well

Presenter14:33

Yes, you did. I mean, all kinds of music with Edmund Hockeridge and the guest appearances on the Eric Robinson programme, music for you. How did you react to this new kind of of stardom? Because in those days, of course, I mean, people forget now. I mean, people who appeared on television were were regarded rather like monkeys at the zoo, weren't they, in the streets? I mean it's quite extraordinary reaction that you got.

Adele Leigh14:49

Yeah.

Adele Leigh14:50

Yes, yes. Well, it was all terribly new and it was all terribly black and white.

Presenter14:55

Yeah.

Adele Leigh14:58

And uh oh, it was great fun. I liked it very much. Uh I found it much easier to do T V than than opera.

Presenter15:06

What is that?

Adele Leigh15:06

And uh oh well, you know the life. It was uh

Adele Leigh15:10

It w it was just easier for me, you know, to go onto the stage and sing an operatic role where every single note has got to be perfect, otherwise they start saying, Oh, she's gone off. You're giving the public

Adele Leigh15:23

Your image, what you look like, as well as your voice. And it's very close. The camera comes in very close.

Adele Leigh15:30

So um I found that very and it it was great fun, I loved it, I loved those years of doing T V.

Presenter15:36

Was there any criticism at the time that that you, the opera star, had kind of sold out because you were popularizing uh or singing popular music?

Adele Leigh15:43

Well, if there was, I didn't take any notice of it.

Adele Leigh15:46

I mean, I literally did things the way I thought was right.

Adele Leigh15:50

And I don't see any reason. I mean, one of the things that I had in mind when we were doing this series, All Kinds of Music, with Ted Hockridge, we sang in the first part of the programme

Adele Leigh16:03

a pop number and uh then I I'd end up with um the Lieberstutt from Tristan Desolde. Not that I sang it the way they would sing it in the opera, but it was arranged for orchestra.

Speaker 316:13

Thank you.

Adele Leigh16:15

Remember doing something like that.

Adele Leigh16:17

And uh songs and arias from Boris Godunoff, because I think these were the things that I wanted to bring to the

Adele Leigh16:24

The wide public, the wider audiences.

Presenter16:27

And now how do you come to to go to Vienna and and join the folks opera there?

Adele Leigh16:31

Well, it was just by chance. I I had heard that they were looking for a

Adele Leigh16:38

a sort of a a a diva type lady.

Adele Leigh16:42

to sing these The Merry Widows and the Countess Maritzas and the Madame Pompadours. And I went over and auditioned. But when I auditioned over there, it wasn't like standing on the stage and

Adele Leigh16:55

And just singing, they rehearse you for ten days with a full cast, and then you put on a costume and you do a performance. And in German it's called an information, an information performance, to give the people an idea of what you might look like and do.

Adele Leigh17:18

As luck would have it, the new director.

Adele Leigh17:22

that was starting that season at the Fox Opera was there that night.

Adele Leigh17:26

And he engaged me.

Adele Leigh17:27

So I went over to Vienna and that was a very, very difficult move.

Presenter17:32

Was it?

Adele Leigh17:33

I don't know why I did it now.

Adele Leigh17:35

I mean, you know, as I said, when you're young you just do those things.

Presenter17:39

Let's talk about the difficulties after this next record because this of course is a is a memory of those days I would imagine, isn't it?

Adele Leigh17:44

Yes, yes. Lippenschweigen from Lehaus the Merry Widow, where I sang in duet with Nigel Douglas.

Speaker 318:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 118:20

We love you.

Speaker 318:25

I take it crazy.

Speaker 318:30

Hail the bodies, wand is falling.

Presenter18:51

Lippen Schweigen from Lehaas The Merry Widow, sung by a castaway Adele Lee with Nigel Douglas, that was recorded about twenty-twenty-odd years ago.

Adele Leigh18:59

I wonder if you can.

Presenter18:59

Yes.

Adele Leigh19:02

Well, it's become lower.

Presenter19:02

The f

Adele Leigh19:04

I've become a sort of a high medso now.

Adele Leigh19:07

It's rather nice for me because I like I always liked mezzo sopranos. In fact, I always tried to be a mezzo soprano when I was a young girl, but

Adele Leigh19:16

and I was singing parts like Sophie and Rosencavalier, it was obvious that I was not a medzo.

Adele Leigh19:22

But uh now I'm I'm enjoying singing in the middle part of my voice. It's very pleasant.

Presenter19:27

Let's go back to those days in Vienna then. Now, you you said before that, uh we played that record that they were looking back, they were rather difficult days. Well, why?

Adele Leigh19:36

In Vienna?

Presenter19:36

Yeah.

Adele Leigh19:37

Oh, it was terribly difficult because I was an English woman living there alone, and it's very cold. I mean, it it's it's cold in England in the winter too, but Middle Europe has very, very, very cold winters. I mean, I arrived

Adele Leigh19:51

I remember in January and the the snow was about four foot high and I had to move into a flat and and my German wasn't very good then. I mean, I could just speak

Adele Leigh20:02

sort of restaurant kind of German and knowing what I could order. And it was really very, very tough. And the Viennese are not like the British.

Adele Leigh20:12

At the beginning, they don't sort of say, well, if you're doing nothing, come over.

Adele Leigh20:17

It's much more formal there. You have to have a sort of formal invitation. Everything's done. And I didn't quite understand.

Adele Leigh20:24

I thought it was going to be just like London, where you just ring up somebody and say, by the way

Adele Leigh20:28

Let's have a cup of coffee. You couldn't do that.

Presenter20:31

But you had a s a great success there, didn't you? Yes. And you became the press label, you said it was a toast to Vienna and all that. Do so was there in fact, do you think, was there any jealousy on behalf of your colleagues because here was this English girl in their in their Volks opera?

Adele Leigh20:33

Oh yes.

Adele Leigh20:36

Yes,

Adele Leigh20:45

Well

Adele Leigh20:47

Shall I be diplomatic or shall I tell you the truth?

Presenter20:49

Or should I tell you the truth?

Adele Leigh20:51

There must have been a certain amount of jealousy, yes, yes and I was having the most enormous success and maybe the fact that I was terribly lonely uh made me

Adele Leigh21:01

think of my work as such a dedication that I I was determined to be to be good, and I was. The audiences liked me and I had fabulous critics.

Adele Leigh21:13

Fabulous critics, they used to s talk about Dare English Lady, which was lovely.

Presenter21:19

Another choice of record, please, Adele.

Adele Leigh21:21

Placido Domingo. I'm a great admirer of Placido, but when I heard his recording.

Adele Leigh21:28

All of them.

Adele Leigh21:29

Vienna City of my dreams

Adele Leigh21:31

I fell in love with the way he sings Comm Sigun Kum Gypsy, it's absolutely delightful.

Speaker 321:40

We've given all the pastor meals, then spirits, men to my name and my sword meet me with this you and your and your cunting on you

Speaker 322:12

On single swinging frosting.

Presenter22:22

Yeah.

Presenter22:27

Placido Domingo, seeing Come Gipsy from Coleman's Countess Marizza.

Presenter22:31

Adele, you mentioned uh before that record about the being lonely in uh in Vienna, but of course it it was there that you met your your husband and one one assumes that that put a stop to the loneliness.

Adele Leigh22:41

Yes, it did.

Adele Leigh22:43

I met him three years after I had been in Vienna.

Adele Leigh22:46

We met just by chance at a dinner party, like everything in life happens by chance.

Adele Leigh22:52

And what attracted me to him at the beginning was that he spoke perfect English, so that was lovely, because although I spoke German by then I didn't speak it so well, and the fact that I could just sort of pop into English and he spoke English.

Adele Leigh23:08

was wonderful.

Adele Leigh23:10

But that was another thing about him that I liked, and that was that he

Adele Leigh23:15

came to England in nineteen thirty nine.

Adele Leigh23:18

on a pretext to play tennis. But he really wanted to get out of Austria because he was in the German army.

Adele Leigh23:25

And he hated what was going on there. He hated everything. And he said, If I'm going to die, I'm not going to die for this nut.

Adele Leigh23:31

Adolf Hitler, I'm going to come. And he really thought he would get into the British Army, which was very, very sweet. But of course.

Adele Leigh23:39

He didn't.

Adele Leigh23:41

They interned him, they sent him to Australia. But anyhow, he he knew England, he was very anglophile, you know, and and that's what uh started it all off.

Presenter23:50

Well, he was of course a a diplomat, wasn't he? And came to London as ambassador, didn't he?

Adele Leigh23:54

Well, in when he came to London before the war, he stayed on the whole war years, and after the war he rang the bell at the Austrian Embassy and said, I like a job, and they engaged him. He was he made tea for everybody. He was a young diplomat.

Adele Leigh24:09

They were looking for people, of course, that had not stayed over there.

Adele Leigh24:14

He started a wonderful, wonderful career because he was a jolly good diplomat.

Presenter24:19

But what was it like being a diplomat's wife, an ambassador's wife? I mean, uh, one assumes there's an awful lot of theatre involved, isn't there? Yes.

Adele Leigh24:26

I always say if I'd wrote a book it would be called from one stage to another, but really because you it's

Adele Leigh24:35

It's a

Adele Leigh24:36

It's easy. It was easy for me, because I had had the training of

Adele Leigh24:40

What I had to learn was I had to learn French.

Adele Leigh24:44

that I didn't know before. And uh that was very good for me, and I spoke much more German. Then we started speaking a lot of German together, and I had English.

Adele Leigh24:55

So uh and what I had to learn to do was to

Adele Leigh25:00

Be more inquisitive about people. Ask lots of questions. But I learnt it.

Presenter25:05

Now, it round about this th this time you you in fact retired, didn't you?

Adele Leigh25:09

Well, it was a very funny thing. It was

Adele Leigh25:12

The question is that I became so happy in my marriage that I didn't need to go on and

Adele Leigh25:18

Somebody once said to me, Oh, but you get your applause at home now.

Adele Leigh25:22

This was really very true. Uh

Presenter25:25

Was there any g great farewell performer?

Adele Leigh25:27

No, no. I gradually slipped out of

Adele Leigh25:30

Not performing and

Adele Leigh25:32

Going back. It was when my husband was ambassador in Budapest I suddenly said one day

Adele Leigh25:37

I really would like to stop singing at the Volks Opera. And he said, What a shame

Adele Leigh25:43

And he loved coming to the performances and sitting out there and saying to everybody around him, That's my wife up there, that's my wife up there It was very touching.

Adele Leigh25:52

So, um

Adele Leigh25:53

I stopped, and then I stayed.

Adele Leigh25:56

at home and I really had an awful lot to do because, you know, you're forever arranging parties and going to parties and talking. And when I wasn't doing all that, I was resting up.

Presenter26:08

Let's sum another choice of record.

Adele Leigh26:11

Well, a very sweet girl I met by doing an interview with her in Vienna.

Adele Leigh26:16

A soprano?

Adele Leigh26:18

Lillian Watson.

Adele Leigh26:20

Singing Would a Maid Be Worth the Winning from Act Two of Mozart's Cosifantutte.

Speaker 326:28

Adorno quit the channel me. There's no burden on me can all the

Speaker 326:39

Holy cow.

Speaker 326:41

I love the

Speaker 326:46

Five or six.

Speaker 326:49

There's a bell in my temple kid of morning finger.

Speaker 327:04

Y my boy Pay Peleklis.

Speaker 327:12

Just beyond this.

Speaker 327:15

Even glory.

Presenter27:21

The Aria would have made be worth the winning from act two of Mozart's Cossi Fantutti, sung by Lillian Watson, who said that you interviewed Lillian Watson.

Adele Leigh27:28

Yes, that's how I met her. I went to do an interview with her. Well, when my husband retired from being ambassador at the Court of Saint James and we went back to live in Vienna,

Adele Leigh27:38

I got rather bored, and I I wondered if I could do some kind of work that would let me stay at home quite a bit, and I didn't want to go back to singing.

Adele Leigh27:46

And then I found out that they were opening an English radio station there, called Blue Danube Radio, for the five thousand people that had come to work in Vienna for Uno.

Adele Leigh27:56

And um I went and uh talked to the director, Tillia Herold, and she said, No, we have nothing for you and I said, Oh, please let me come and do anything but um you know, I'd be able to speak English again and I can get interviews with Placido Domingo and

Adele Leigh28:12

Shoal tea.

Adele Leigh28:14

and Joan Sutherland, and and I know so many people from my singing days. So she said, Well, okay, try one and and I tried one and she liked it, so.

Adele Leigh28:24

And then I started this uh this interviewing thing, and I went to to interview Lillian Watson. And I I said to her, I didn't call you after the first night because I thought you'd be going out on the town with your colleagues and celebrating.

Adele Leigh28:39

She said no, no.

Adele Leigh28:41

I came home and had a quiet glass of wine and went to bed. In Vienna things are different. They they leave you alone much more.

Presenter28:49

Now what about coming back to to London to to work in uh in Follies? First of all, what about London itself? Is it a great thrill to come back here to live again? Or?

Adele Leigh28:58

Well, it it was a thrill, but it was so different. It was a completely different London from I mean, I was coming back as a singer, so we'll forget the ambassadorial bit now. So I'm coming back now to work again on the stage. And it really was enormously

Presenter29:15

Would they actually work itself or or what?

Adele Leigh29:17

Well, first of all, I had never done a musical. The last thing I did here was on the stage at the Brighton Festival where I sang in La Vie Parisienne.

Adele Leigh29:28

That was in the early seventies.

Adele Leigh29:31

Uh yes, London was different and I was entering a new world, the world of the musical, the showbiz, if you like. I mean, I'd really come into showbiz.

Adele Leigh29:41

And uh I was very apprehensive.

Presenter29:43

But you're enjoying it now.

Adele Leigh29:44

Oh, I'm loving him.

Presenter29:46

And has it fired your ambition to to the point where you want to continue after Follies is finished?

Adele Leigh29:51

Very much.

Presenter29:51

Really? What do you want to do then?

Adele Leigh29:54

No, no, no more. No. Why not? I don't think so. I think that's been a period of my life. I I don't want to go back to opera. I want to now do the things that I've

Adele Leigh30:05

I always loved and those are the sort of the operettas and the musicals.

Adele Leigh30:10

Buy Noel Card, maybe bittersweet.

Adele Leigh30:13

Maybe the Dancing Years, maybe the Novellos, the Ivanovello things. Oh, there are lots of things. There are also new things being written.

Presenter30:22

We wish you well and look forward to the realization of that ambition, perhaps. Let's have a final choice of record.

Adele Leigh30:28

Well, somebody I admire very much in Follies. Well, I admire them all because I think it's wonderful for them all to go on and do eight performances a week like that. But

Adele Leigh30:37

Julia Mackenzie, she doesn't sing Broadway Baby in Follies, but I heard her singing it in Side by Side by Sondheim in the seventies, and I've always loved her recording of it.

Speaker 330:50

I'm just a Broadway baby.

Speaker 330:56

Walking up my tired feet

Speaker 331:01

Pound and Forty second street.

Speaker 331:04

Tibiana Shore

Speaker 331:11

Run away, baby.

Speaker 331:16

Learning how to sing and dance.

Presenter31:20

That was Julie Mackenzie singing Broadway Baby from Stephen Sondheim's Follies.

Presenter31:25

Adeli, you're now on your desert island. Uh you have to imagine that a wave comes along, seven of your records are washed away, you're left with one. Which one would you want to keep?

Adele Leigh31:35

Goodness, that's difficult.

Adele Leigh31:38

Well, something to make me laugh, maybe. Noel Card singing Let's Do It.

Presenter31:43

And what about the book? Again, you can assume that you've got the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare on the island. Which book would you choose?

Adele Leigh31:51

Alice in Wonderland

Presenter31:52

Why is that?

Adele Leigh31:54

Well, because it's so surreal.

Presenter31:56

and luxury item inanimate.

Adele Leigh32:01

I have very low blood pressure, so I'm going to live a long time.

Adele Leigh32:05

I think I'll take a loofah to brush my

Adele Leigh32:09

brush myself with.

Adele Leigh32:11

So that

Adele Leigh32:12

I feel a little bit um more alive on my lonely island.

Presenter32:18

Adoli, thank you very much indeed.

Speaker 332:27

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.