Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Theatre director best known for staging Miss Saigon, Carousel, and other accessible, large-scale productions.
On the island
Eight records
Joanna Riding and Michael Hayden
It's uh recording from the radio of uh Joanna Riding and Michael Hayden, my two stars, singing the best number, If I Loved You.
Falstaff: Act I, Scene 2: "Pst, pst, Nannetta..."
Alfredo Kraus and Mirella Freni with the RCA Italiana Opera Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
He is able to produce two kids telling each other how much they fancy each other, and music of such grace and rapture and simplicity that it blows me away.
I just think is probably compulsory for somebody of my generation.
Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, D. 898: II. Andante un poco mosso
Eugene Istomin, Isaac Stern and Leonard Rose
My next record I've chosen simply because of its extraordinary beauty... It's also something that... reminds me of... My grandfather... when he died he left a huge collection of LPs... and this got maximum number of stars.
Don Giovanni, K. 527: Act II, Trio: "Ah taci, ingiusto core"Favourite
This trio is about um Elvira, who is going to throw herself back into the arms of Don Giovanni, and she knows he's a liar, and she knows he's a cosmic shit, but she's still going to do it. And Mozart celebrates that, and we've all been there, and I couldn't do without this.
Peter Grimes: Four Sea Interludes, Op. 33a: I. Dawn
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Benjamin Britten
This would be necessary... for the pessimistic moments. Because I think this music is about... The sea which never changes. And... I'd be surrounded by the sea, and the sea is an awfully good metaphor.
To Keep Me Up When I'm Down. It's uh the title track from the original Broadway cast recording of Guys and Dolls. A great musical. It's about New York. It's about... width and being on top and... Having a good time.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:55Is it your feeling that if you can capture the visual imagination of the audience, you have a better chance of getting the intellectual message across?
No, because I think that... I have on occasion been seduced by... what might be called an element of visual display, which... regrettably, can exist independently of the feeling and thought at the centre of a show. I believe that in the ideal evening in the theatre meaning and feeling are carried equally by the way it looks, by what is said, by the way it sounds it should be a total experience.
Presenter asks
4:47What distinguishes the Rodgers and Hammerstein partnership from modern musical composers?
I think... what distinguishes the Rogers and Hammerstein partnership is the absolute appropriateness of the tune to the emotion. That involves a perfection of musical expression and a... perfection of lyrical expression, which I... don't see around very much anymore. I think maybe in the forties and fifties Hammerstein had access to a depth of sentiment and a type of sentiment which would now be thought phony.
Presenter asks
10:34What happened at Cambridge that made you realize you were a director rather than an actor?
The keepsakes
The book
The Nonesuch Edition of the Works of Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
It's the non-such edition of The Works of Coleridge, which has his best verse, his best letters, and some of his best literary criticism. It's so pro-life. He was such an enthusiast, he was so high on the business of being alive, and I think I'd need that on an island.
The luxury
I would take a large supply of Total Block suncream, because otherwise I'd be extremely uncomfortable.
I did quite a lot of acting... I realized that... there were better actors than me. I realized also that I didn't have an actor's concentration. An actor needs to be... single-minded, obsessive about making himself into somebody else... It's not an actor's job to have an overview... And I found my attention wandering the whole time on stage and... all I was really interested in doing on stage was making the audience laugh, which I... did rather too often
Presenter asks
21:17What did you mean when you said you have a dreadful feeling that opera is finished?
I think... in a sense... my statement's unarguable, that... the operatic repertoire is not being replenished. In the end, unless... those who are writing operas now are able, whilst keeping their integrity intact... to open up and include the general public again. It will become a museum art, because the operatic repertoire is tiny.
Presenter asks
28:10How are you going to cope with being alone on a desert island?
I'd hate it, really. Uh I like being on my own very much, but I only like being on my own when I have the option not to be. And I think my idea of heaven is... to have a party going on downstairs, which I've elected not to be at.
“I love to be involved in an evening in the theatre where a thousand people are collectively moved, collectively changed, collectively made to feel things about themselves as individuals and about themselves as a group which they wouldn't otherwise feel. That's what the theatre's about.”
“Being a director is... it's an odd job. It's a job that's only been invented fairly recently... and what appears to have happened is that since we invented ourselves... we've now made ourselves important and put ourselves at the apex of the triangle. And I think often this is... not a... healthy state of affairs.”
“Mozart writes about... the humiliation of sex. He writes about the mess we all get into when we fall in love. He writes about how... cruel and absurd men are, and specifically about how painful it is to be a woman in a man's world.”