Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A prima donna and celebrated British singer.
On the island
Eight records
the delicate touch that he has… it's really as if he has uh butterfly wings attached to his fingertips. It's so beautifully played.
Richard White with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge
This record uh would help me to keep in touch with pure sound. … There would be skawking parrots and gnattering monkeys, and it would be like pop music to me, and that is something I want to get away from.
because of this wonderful voice. And when I was near to her at the Mermaid Theatre, I learned how she used her body so beautifully. It was the timing and the in fact she had turned her body into a beautiful machine because nobody before or since I've heard breathes like Flextett. She had the most wonderful breathing capacity.
to bring back memories of how English should be spoken.
I think that I shall have to exercise my body. So I want to dance round this island, and I must have this. I adore this w waltz of this man, and it inspires you to move and to dance.
Tu n'es pas beau, tu n'es pas riche
a little bit of fun, a little bit of French.
it's his beautiful, dreamy Claire de Lune is such a beautiful piano piece anyhow. And I love Heifitz because to me he is the a great musician. … if I can find a person like Heifitz who gives me the composer and still gives me the interpretation that suits my idea of that piece of music, then of course he's a god.
I want to have I must have had a seekum and his voice. I think is the most wonderful voice. … He really is serious here, and this voice and this like Fleistad. He's got the volume. And the quality together.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:18Did you come from a musical family and hear a lot of music?
Oh, I didn't hear a lot of music, but uh I come from a musical family. My father was a very good amateur pianist. And uh from my mother's side I inherited the voice. They all sang on my mother's side.
Presenter asks
2:37When did you start to study singing?
Oh, when I went to Paris I was sent to Paris by Walter Rubens, who heard me sing at a church here in Maiden Lane. And he said, Oh, you must go to Paris and study with Jean de Rechque. I must have been about uh sixteen and a half.
Presenter asks
4:13What was your first impression of [Debussy]?
Well, he was a very big man. very sombre looking and uh black hair and black beard very broad shouldered. He was he must have if he stood upright, he must have been about six Over six feet.
Presenter asks
6:23How did [Mary Garden] take to meeting her successor [as Mélisande]?
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
She didn't take to it very well. She wasn't very kind. She I shouldn't say this, of course, but to me she was the real Prima Donna. I don't know what that means to you.
Presenter asks
8:46In the thirties your career seemed to come unstuck a bit. You hit a bad patch, didn't you?
Yes, exactly, because life was unsettled and th the bad nineteen thirties, I believe they were called here. I don't know what happened here in nineteen thirties, something. Anyhow, I read a great deal about the radio. of America. And I thought, well, why shouldn't I? Get into that racket over there. Well, I went there in nineteen thirty-seven. and couldn't make any progress at all. Everybody said to me, Oh, Miss Tate, but you mustn't forget you're forgotten here. Well, that was a challenge.
Presenter asks
10:40You kept singing at a pitch of perfection for over fifty years. What was your secret?
Oh, the method of Jean Doreschque, of course. Nothing lives without method. Or tradition. When I say tradition, everybody fights shy of this word of tradition here in England. I don't know why. They w you see, they think that they're being squares when you use the word tradition. And it's not true. Because no one can build a house that will stand unless they build it with tradition. Because if you don't build your plumbing right according to tradition, what's the good of the house? So that's what I say to some of the pupils who rather look at scornfully at me when I say tradition. You must learn your Mozart and learn tradition.
“the delicate touch that he has… it's really as if he has uh butterfly wings attached to his fingertips. It's so beautifully played.”
“You mustn't forget that on a desert island There would be skawking parrots and gnattering monkeys, and it would be like pop music to me, and that is something I want to get away from.”
“He said, In two years she will make her debut and I said to myself, Good gracious me, two years. I don't I can only speak English. I don't know any foreign languages at all. I know nothing about singing. I know nothing about anything.”
“I heard him say one day, Wagner and Mozart and everybody else, they don't know anything about music, you can tear up their music. And yet I sang his music to him exactly as Doreschki taught me to sing Mozart. And it was for this perfection of Mozart singing that he what he liked.”
“I don't think I g no I'm not going to this desert island to do anything at all. I'm not going to do anything. … No, I shall play my records. Just go on playing my records. That's why I think you're awfully stingy, only giving us eight, you know.”