Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A singer known for covering a very wide range of songs, from Bulgarian folk to opera.
On the island
Eight records
Ensemble of the Bulgarian Republic
Bulgarian folk songs
Opera has been a consistent love with me. And perhaps the opera that I have loved most, the whole opera, is La Boheme. And I would like to hear the Liti Albanese recording of it, because that's the one that became very important to me when I was a young girl.
The Rite of Spring (The Sacrificial Dance)
Pierre Monteux / Paris Conservatoire Orchestra
also because it happens to be one of the masterpieces of all time, and that's the Sacre de Prentin, the Rites of Spring. And um I've chosen, I think, uh one of the most exciting moments of that.
Der Rosenkavalier, Act III Trio
Christa Ludwig, Teresa Stich-Randall, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
the trio from and it has to have a little bit Schwarzkopf in it. I don't care who else is singing, but Schwarzkopf's marshalling is unbeatable.
Well, this in a way represents my uh insane desire to get out of the avant-garde cliché. Honencour asked me to perform in his recording of Orofeo of Monteverde... Anyway, he liked what I did, and we recorded it, and from then on I became again a kind of Moto Verdi expert.
And that's one of the reasons why I felt that I couldn't go on that desert island without her.
Sinfonia, third movementFavourite
Swingle Singers, New York Philharmonic, cond. Luciano Berio
Well, that's uh a very important part of my life. Luciano Berrio. I mean, having to choose one record out of all the magnificent things he's done, it was probably the most difficult decision I had to make.
Well, record number eight is a very important part of my life, too. It's the Beatles. Because partly it it's involved with my daughter. She was in her teens when the Beatles came out, and I lived through that period with a great amount of joy.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:11Did you hear a lot of music as a child? Were your parents musical?
My mother is very musical. My father could take it or leave it and generally left it. But my mother had a lot of records around and she was wise enough to permit me to use the records even as a little girl. She figured that it [was] all right, if a record broke it was okay, but the important thing was that I should want to play a record and hear music.
Presenter asks
2:59Where did you study?
Well, I studied with the records, believe it or not. I used to sing along with Lily Pons and sing along with with Ezio Pinza and and old recordings of Shaliapin. So I was doing the baritone repertoire, the bass repertoire and the colouriteur repertoire. And nobody had told me that you can't, you see, so I did.
Presenter asks
8:17How would you describe what [Luciano Berio] was writing? He was really enlarging the frontiers of music.
Yes, well it's very difficult because lots of labels have been given to th the kind of music, uh the the new music that was being written in the fifties. It was called post Webern and uh post uh I don't know what else and serialistic they called it. But the real composers couldn't be fitted under a title. They used avant-garde, but it's become such a cliché that that avant-garde doesn't work any more. I just consider it good new music.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
8:50Did you find it was rather limiting to your career that you became a sort of high priestess of this kind of music?
Well, actually in a way it expanded many aspects of my my career that I hadn't anticipated and it literally made a name for me. But it became rather harrying to think that I was only considered as a contemporary music singer when I had a whole complete background of other things behind me. But I owe a great deal to contemporary music because in a way it it made it possible for me to meet uh one of the greatest musicians of all times, uh Igor Stravinsky.
Presenter asks
13:31There's an intriguing note here that you did some experimental work with Peter Brook. What was that about?
Well, he invited me and about five or six other people, of different uh crafts, I should say, To um To exchange ideas and experiences with his nuclear group. I would be teaching them the use of voice in other ways besides acting. And there was an actress and there was a there was a director, uh, Chakin from the Open Theatre. And we spent three weeks exchanging information, performance information, and trying and dancing and singing and And it was one of the most important moments of my career too.
Presenter asks
24:16How well do you think you would stand up to being a castaway?
Uh, practically rather badly, because I'm a a very sophisticated city dweller type. I think one of the first things I would do is to find out How many living people are on that island? I don't care if they're tribes or even cannibals. I was. I assume there's nobody on the island except you. Oh, how disastrous I was counting on playing the White Goddess.
“I used to sing along with Lily Pons and sing along with with Ezio Pinza and and old recordings of Shaliapin. So I was doing the baritone repertoire, the bass repertoire and the colouriteur repertoire. And nobody had told me that you can't, you see, so I did.”
“I think it's probably the most difficult part of of uh my clowning to sing bad. I cannot listen to my recordings of singing off key. I I love to perform that way, but I cannot listen to them.”
“I think I would have to have to take Luciano Sinfonia. most representative of what I am.”
“I would have to have a box of spices with me. How can you eat those stuff without any Corianderer? Terror? It's not possible. A great big box of spices.”