Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Cookery writer whose authentic Italian recipes inspired Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith.
On the island
Eight records
Fabrico de Andre was a great singer, and he composed the music, he wrote his lyrics, he played classical guitar very well. and he sang. And he was uh compared to Bob Dylan and people say quite a lot of people say that if he were English he would have been far more famous than Bob Dylan. And my children, my sons, which were in their early teenage then, they were always listening to either the Beatles or Fabrizio de Andre, and I was cooking at the sound of Fabrizio de Andre, which I loved too.
La traviata: Prelude to Act III
Orchestra of La Scala Milan, conducted by Arturo Toscanini
Because to start off, it reminds me. Oh, my poor mother. At uh a performance of La Traviata at La Scala, we had a box which was straight above the timpani and the drum and so on, and she had some chocolate on the parapet, and somehow she must have moved them. And they all went ding tom boom, ding tom boom on the timpani and the drum. And Toscanini looked up. at her for what she said was an eternity. And a message came back from the maestro, through mutual friend, that the maestro would be very appreciative if Signora del Conte would desist to make her contribution to a musical soiree. And then it would remind me of a lot of evening during the last year of the war which were not very funny, and we were all blacked in in the house from the winter was terrible, and there was nothing to do but to listen to opera, and my father loved Traviata and Inniverdi.
Minuet from String Quintet in E major, Op. 11, No. 5
Because oh, because it will bring me to another island an island full of people and chatter. And that is Venice, which I adore. In the background in Venice, when you walk, there is always Buccarini or Vivaldi.
Que reste-t-il de nos amours ?
All through the war Mussolini didn't allow us to hear any American, English, French music. So suddenly, when the war was over, we discovered the Bincross, Bishardrinet, Louis Armstrong, and the Laficero all these people. So Chartrené was one of my favourite and I think I would like to hear it on your island.
Teresa Berganza and Ruggero Raimondi
Yes, it will remind me of our first meeting and how funny it was.
Now we are going to r to listen to Bing Crosby, because that's another one that we could listen after the war at last.
String Quartet No. 2 in C major, Op. 54: Adagio
Number seven is the uh Adado from Haydn Spring Quartet. It was the chosen piece of music that Oliver had at his funeral. He prepared all his music, all the reading and everything. It was a beautiful spring day. And we had a lovely party, what do you call it, a wake? and that was played in that beautiful church where he was buried.
Otello: Già nella notte densa (Love Duet, Act I)Favourite
Placido Domingo and Mirella Freni
Because Otello is, I think, to me the perfect opera. And Domingo is the perfect Otello.
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:07What were your very first impressions of Britain as you arrived [at Victoria Station]?
No, frankly, no, because I was looking for my host, and I saw him, and he was a very typical British gentleman, I thought. He was wearing a a pinstripe blue suit with a bola hat.
Presenter asks
5:44What did you make of the character of the English?
Well, you know that somehow it wasn't such a surprise. … There was a different thing, certainly, like uh sending their children to boarding school when they're the age of seven, which I couldn't possibly have done. or having, you know, children in the sitting only from five to six or whatever it was. There was a difference yet. Somehow I didn't find it uh that it worried me in the least.
Presenter asks
10:49What was your mother like?
My mother she was quite beautiful, in fact. … She was not I can't explain she was not exceptionally warm to us, but she was a very good mother, in spite of not being warm. She loved us, she'd cuddle us, but at the same time there was a certain coolness in her.
The keepsakes
The book
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
so that I will dream of being on another island, far more civilized than the desert one on in Sicily.
The luxury
A perennial supply of extra virgin olive oil
a perennial supply of extra virgin olive oil so that I could eat the roots, vegetables that I can find. I can even dress my fish if I can catch'em.
Presenter asks
16:46Tell me about the time then that the path in front of you was machine gunned. What happened?
Nothing could move on the road, apart from military truck and uh jeeps and things like that. We were on the bicycle, but there was a a donkey's pulled cart in front of us. So I was bicycling away and with my friends and the aeroplane came down and thank goodness I threw myself in the ditch and so did my friends. Because the donkey, which was only five meters in front of us, was killed.
Presenter asks
19:09What happened [when you went to prison]?
Well, perhaps I should say that I was arrested. In prison, I was only … four or five hours each time. … the first time was rather unpleasant because I was bicycling very late, just before the curfew. So they brought me in the I was in the Nasi Commissario, chief of police. Very unpleasant. And he ate all my salame. My salame. … And then the second time was when the family I was with was arrested because of the husband of the father was obviously in the blacklist of the fascists. While my father and I were left out after four or five hours when they saw that there was nothing to do with us.
Presenter asks
28:47Does it bother you that [your mother] never said well done?
Yes. Mm. Yes, to be honest.
“I don't think there is much of anything else that I positively dislike. Being a Scot, I have to ask you have you ever eaten haggis? Yes, I have, and I like them. Oh, yes, but I like their offals, and even if they're mutton.”
“I never felt at home in either country any more. When I'm in one country, I think I sh oh. I would rather be in the other one and vice versa, but I become a hybrid.”
“I think stanketsa is a feeling of uh not particularly being very interesting in going on. Right, it's a weariness with the idea of life itself. And and so work helps to stave that off, does it? Work yes, work gives me that sort of uh sprint to be here again.”