Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Theatre, opera, and television director best known for his acclaimed production of Peter Grimes and his West End work with Albert Finney and Robert Lindsay.
On the island
Eight records
String Quintet in C major, D.956
William Pleeth and the Amadeus Quartet
It was a recording that my wife sent me when we were um, I suppose you'd call a courting in Melbourne. She sent me a recording of this, and it's become one of my most favourite pieces of music since.
because um John Vickers was that Peter Grimes, and I did quite a lot of work with him, and he taught me a great deal about opera.
John Brownlee, David Franklin, Salvatore Baccaloni
it was the first opera that my father took me to and I saw John Brownlee sing it. I remember at the time he ate spaghetti before the Commendatorio came in. Made a deep impression.
There's No Business Like Show Business
reminds me very much of my parents, because they used to get show tune records, and a great favourite of theirs was Ethel Merman, and in a curious way I suspect that this is my philosophy of life.
Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98
Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carlos Kleiber
I did a production of Otello with [him], and whom I admire greatly above many conductors.
Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D.960
this is music which is in conversation with itself, and sometimes when I have a problem with dialogue, a problem of scenic structure. I often go to music to try to find a way to create the right sort of sense of mood and structure.
you will have the complete essence of Italian opera and Verdi, which I absolutely love.
Requiem: Agnus DeiFavourite
Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Vienna State Opera Chorus, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
I did two operas with Joan Sutherland in Australia, and I think she's a very great artist and a great Australian. And I did two operas with George Shulte, and I think he's a great artist, but not an Australian.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:59What was this flop that broke your confidence?
Well, it was a um a play by Thomas Bernhardt called The Force of Habit. And it wasn't the play so much, it was the experience of doing it at the National at the time. It was the second play on at The Littleton and um the play had been very heavily subscribed because everyone wanted to come and see the theatre and it was absolutely full. And um I found that you couldn't hear after ten minutes for the sound of people walking out and the first thing I found out about the design of The Littleton is they should have an aisle up the centre, so people could walk out quietly.
Presenter asks
7:27But tell me about that production of Peter Grimes. Why was it so successful?
Well, it was terribly good to begin with, and also it was an unexpected success in the sense that it was first billed to be a production by Tyron Guthrie that was being revived by me, but then it was discovered that the scenery of that production had, in fact, disintegrated in a warehouse near Oxford. And I suggested to the administration of the opera house that, for the price of reconstructing that scenery, I reinvent a new production of it. And I had a different reading of the opera altogether. I had a much tougher, more brechtian, more metaphysical reading of it, in which I put John Vickers in the centre of this interpretation as a sort of metaphysical figure. And it was a question of the starkness of the production and the sort of the intensity of his reading, which I think created a whole new view of the the opera itself. I think up to then the opera was a kind of picture of English village life. After that, I think it became a picture of the artist.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
10:46Have you changed your view? Have you just become more diplomatic?
No, not at all. I I don't think the opera singers would actually disagree with that statement necessarily. I think one's dealing with outsized emotional events on stage and without those egos I mean John Vickers was a huge ego, who's a huge personality. It's part of bringing opera to life to to try to find people who can fill th these great heroic sung roles. And you can't always do it if you're a terribly nice person. Sometimes you have to be a monster.
Presenter asks
15:35How did that come about? What nationality are you?
Well, I'm actually I'm Australian, but uh my parents were Russian Jews and they were uh refugees living in um the French concession in Shanghai, and uh we were stateless until we went to Australia.
Presenter asks
20:58So the minute he suggested that you go into the theatre, you didn't give it a second thought. You thought, That's absolutely right, he's got me right and I'm going to do what he says.
Well, actually I had already gone. I'd already gone and got a job as an assistant director at Coffin Garden, and he wrote me a postcard saying, Where are you? So it wasn't that that he told me, it's sort of I think events overtook us.
Presenter asks
28:38But is there also in you, and does there have to be in a good director, a ruthless streak? I mean, at the end of the day, when you've coaxed and cajoled and you can't quite get what you want, are you able to say, I'm awfully sorry, I really don't think this part is for you?
Yes, yes there is and and it's something that one actually learns one has to do. I remember I once did a play and um there was a person in the company who hated being in the play and was giving a terrible performance and I was too nice and too frightened to sack this person and it ruined the whole whole production. And I now know that you actually have to face the the unpalatable as a director and in fact people rely on you to do that because they rely on you to deliver a good show and you have to do what you have to do.
“What I'll need from my eight records is a mixture of music which will entertain me, music which will set off moods of things that have happened in the past, and also music that'll help me think and fantasise.”
“I discovered how cruel the theatre system can be, and especially at the national at the time.”
“I have all these photographs of uh my my parents sitting at night clubs with um large hats and uh evening wear, and I remember sort of um assuming it's exactly like Empire of the Sun, a rather wonderful sort of unreal existence.”
“I'd already gone and got a job as an assistant director at Coffin Garden, and he wrote me a postcard saying, Where are you? So it wasn't that that he told me, it's sort of I think events overtook us.”
“I haven't a clue. I I think I'll get very, very bored, to be quite honest. I don't fancy going to a desert island.”