Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
English opera singer.
On the island
Eight records
It is because he was my first love. When when I used to go up to London in those early days, he was in the company at the Olvic and he played Hamlet there, which I think was the first theatrical event that really got through to me.
Philharmonia Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra
it dates from the period before I became a professional singer. While I was teaching I was also a member of the Philharmonia Chorus.
Orfeo ed Euridice: Dance of the Blessed Spirits
I've chosen the passage where the flute solo begins. When I went to Sadlus Wells, my first role there was the second lady in the new production of The Magic Flute and we did hundreds of performances.
Fidelio: Gott! Welch' Dunkel hier!
I have chosen it because it's, I think, probably my favourite opera. I have chosen the section just before Florestan's first line, Gott Verchdunke here, when the orchestra has painted the picture of his imprisonment in in the dungeon.
Così fan tutte: Soave sia il vento
Kiri Te Kanawa, Frederica von Stade and Jules Bastin
I love the trio from Kazi and I would like to hear Kiritakanawa singing Fiorda Ligi because in my view hers is the most beautiful soprano voice of our generation and I would love to have it with me on the desert island.
which I sang for the first time last season with the Scottish Opera, and it was one of the highlights artistically of my career. I enjoyed myself enormously doing it, and it's a wonderful work.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral': FinaleFavourite
My last record is is the one that I couldn't do without, and it's the Beethoven Ninth Symphony. I'd like the whole thing. But if we could just play where the orchestra begins the theme in the finale, the the theme of joy, it's such a statement of confidence in the human race
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:52Was there a lot of music in your home [growing up]?
There was always music. My father sang in church choirs and we used to have musical evenings singing round the piano and there was never any professional music.
Presenter asks
3:20What did you read [at the University of Birmingham]?
I read English.
Presenter asks
3:25With a view to what?
Well, I had already in fact decided quite suddenly that I was going to be an opera singer. Apropos of nothing really. I had always been, as I say, terribly involved in going to th the theatre. I ha I had seen about one or two operas in my entire life, but I knew that the theatre wasn't quite it that I want wanted to do. And it suddenly struck me one morning that I wanted to be an opera singer, and I never ever changed my mind.
Presenter asks
22:36Do you approach this modern work with any kind of missionary feeling? Do you do you really believe in it?
The keepsakes
The book
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure and The Woodlanders
Thomas Hardy
I really don't know. As Shakespeare's there already, I suppose I could do without Keats, and therefore I'll take as many of the Hardy novels as you will allow me bound into one binding. ... Well, I'll take Tess and I'll take Jude and the Woodlanders.
The luxury
Apart from the fact that it would be so wonderful to have such a beautiful thing there, and also, although the world might not come and find me, they might come and find him. ... Also, again, it's a statement of heroism and I think I couldn't possibly not pull myself together and get on with life if he was there.
Yes, I do. I believe that one can't simply continue an art form uh like opera as if it were a museum. One has to inject new ideas, new thoughts into it, and and I feel that anybody that's involved in the profession must devote a certain amount of their time to that process.
“I read a great deal as a child and instead of doing mass I would be learning poetry or something.”
“I believe that one can't simply continue an art form uh like opera as if it were a museum. One has to inject new ideas, new thoughts into it, and and I feel that anybody that's involved in the profession must devote a certain amount of their time to that process.”
“I think I'd quite like to go back to Yorkshire, yes. I'd also quite like to be by the sea, so it might be somewhere Dorset or somewhere like that. That would be love.”