Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Opera soprano whose lyrical performances and charismatic presence made her a star, known for her breakout role as Cleopatra at Glyndebourne.
On the island
Eight records
I just love this song. It's become a sort of like a mantra for me, and I have it in my headphones all the time.
Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)Favourite
Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams
I can still hear her and see her singing and interpreting and phrasing certain parts of this song, Love Ageless and Evergreen.
This recording was one I've heard my whole life. And it's this, to me, the sort of the bar of everything great.
We loved listening to this song as a kid. Andrew and I, my brother, it's so funny.
Frances Ruffelle and Michael Ball
Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Herbert Kretzmer
Eponine is a beautiful role and this duet fascinated me from childhood. Also because it's got a death in it, and I was fascinated by what it would be like to die on stage.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 – Adagio sostenuto
Lang Lang, Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, Valery Gergiev
I was listening to this a lot when I was pregnant with my son.
Sheep May Safely Graze (from Cantata BWV 208)
Danielle de Niese, The English Concert, Harry Bicket
I chose this because it reminds me of this moment when I got the first edit of the disc.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:30What has been your premise for choosing your eight discs today?
Well, it took a while because music is my whole life, so my whole life is a soundtrack and I'm always attached with headphones. You think about actually landing on a desert island as a castaway. And you never see anyone again. And this is all you have. And so, in a way, it is your life. This is music that would sustain me, but also music that I actually do want to hear on repeat a thousand times over.
Presenter asks
5:43You strike me as the sort of person that wouldn't necessarily be interested in a middling career. You're always aiming for the top.
Yeah, my mom told me dare to dream. She always used to say this, and I had this little picture above my bed. And she's definitely instilled in us that we couldn't be on earth without having big dreams. You know, she used to say, God gave everybody a talent, and we have to discover what yours is. And she firmly believed this. And I felt so lucky that I'd figured out what mine was so young because I had their support and I had their nurturing to help me to uncover that.
Presenter asks
6:25When you come off stage, are you energized by what you've been through or exhausted?
Generally, after that, I'm up for hours with just the remainder energy of that kind of like radio wires between me and the audience.
The keepsakes
The book
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I kind of went with my very first instinct, which was one of my favorite books when I was a kid, which was The Great Gatsby, which is a kind of melancholy book actually. And um but it's sort of melancholically beautiful. So that's why I thought I could take it to the island because I would read it again and again and find new colors and new shades of melancholy.
The luxury
My very first thing that I thought of was that I would take a slide projector. Because I remember when I was a kid, my dad would, you know, all the photos were on slides. And mom, dad, Andrew, and myself, we would sit and this, he'd pull the screen down and we would have these amazing slideshows.
Presenter asks
8:34How did your parents get to Australia?
My parents moved separately when they were young students. So they met in Australia. My parents are mixed with Dutch and Scottish heritage, so they're called burghers, B-U-R-G-H-E-R, and it was quite a common move that the Sri Lankan burgher population, which only made up about five percent of Sri Lanka's total population, did because English was their mother tongue and they grew up with British schooling, Western clothing. My mum is a Presbyterian, my dad is a Catholic, so they had this colonization, Commonwealth existence, which went away when Sri Lanka was no longer a colony. And so this was a very common thing to go to the Commonwealth countries where they felt more at one with the culture.
Presenter asks
13:01You had chosen opera by that point because it was original, because other people weren't trying to do it? What was the [reason]?
Yeah, it was a combination of feeling it was the most natural and lovely way to sing. And I was able to do it naturally, so it felt easy, and I felt it was special.
Presenter asks
15:29How do you keep a performance from becoming stale?
I just pretend it never happened before. I go on stage every night and I always say to myself, this day never happened.
“I get nervous and I often think, you know, why do we keep doing those to ourselves, go back out into the lion's den, you know, into the stage, this great unknown?”
“I feel fear when I sing. Not all the time. It's funny, it's a sort of paradox that lies within me of the stage is the most natural place that I can be. It's where I give everything of myself, but I get fearful about things before I go on. But once you get on stage, I'm in the service of the character, so I'm no longer in the service of myself.”
“I just pretend it never happened before. I go on stage every night and I always say to myself, this day never happened.”
“I don't have one goal. I want to share my passion and exuberance for classical music.”
“Probably I would choose Evergreen. It's one of my youngest memories, but it's also, it kind of describes my whole life because love is so important to me. You know, my love for my husband, my love for my children, my family. And love is ageless and evergreen and that is something you'd want to have circling around you at every moment when you're alone.”