Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Actress best known for her portrayal of evil Livia in 'I, Claudius' and Beth Morgan in 'How Green Was My Valley'.
On the island
Eight records
The Importance of Being Earnest (Act I scene)
Dame Edith Evans and Sir John Gielgud
The first one I'd like is of uh one of my idols, Dame Edith Evans. And I'd like a bit out of that uh marvellous recording that she and John Gilgood and a wonderful cast made of the importance of being earnest.
We were talking about my father earlier, and he had a choir, but when he was a very young boy, he used to sing with the Lenetti male voice choir. and his brother stews things with them. Then I'm now their President, and very, very proud of them, so I I would please like to have them, the Tenettimo Voice Choir, singing a piece called A Veduen Ariane.
You Are the Sunshine of My Life
I don't know much about pop music, but I discovered this in that very hot summer we had in nineteen seventy five. Do you remember? There was a wonderful baking summer. And this always reminds me of warm weather and London in the sunshine.
Arm, Arm, Ye Brave (from Judas Maccabaeus)
I told you that my childhood was spent humming baritone arias, and this was one of my favorite pop tunes. It's from Judas Maccabeus, and it's Arm, Arm, Ye Brave.
I love big, brave performers, people who just stand up there and get on with it. And Ethel Merman is, to my mind, one of the best of these. She doesn't bother much with doing any acting or dancing, she just sings.
I spent my childhood listening to my father singing, but he also had an enormous library of Caruso records, so I was very familiar with him as well. And I would like to hear that wonderful duet he sings with Ruffo from Otello.
A Shropshire Lad (poems read by James Mason)
One of my favourite poets is A. E. Hausmann, and I spend a good deal of time reading it aloud if I'm asked to read anything. However, about six years ago Michael Bryant and his wife gave me a long playing record of James Mason reading A. E. Heisman, which almost brought my reading days of Hausman to an end because he does it so marvellously.
Summer (from The Four Seasons)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Well, when I was in the South American jungle, my makeup artist Basil and I used to jealously share this next record because we got a little bit homesick. And we used to play a good deal of vivaldi, among other things, and I would like to hear the end of the summer movement from the four seasons, please.
Soave sia il vento (from Così fan tutte)Favourite
Well, I'm a pretty cheerful person anyway, but I find Mozart is my my quickest access really to high spirits and and good humor and Well, like most people, I suppose, I love Mozart.
Oh, well, Ella Fitzgerald singing, she could have been singing anything, but in this instance I'm going to have her singing Love Is Here to Stay.
Till There Was You (from The Music Man)
Um this is Barbara Cook, who is a friend of mine, and this is Barbara singing when she was a girl. It's one of her early Angenou performances, and I listened to her last year at Drury Lane doing a two and a half hour concert, and her voice is still exactly the same, it's still a girl's voice. It's wonderful.
Oh, this is a record we used to love actually from that period, I remember. It's it's the Dubliners. And I remember when we were when he was a huge international movie star, we used to live in Hampstead and everyone used to want to come and visit him, of course. Always eventually the Irish music would be put on and it was very, very funny to see kind of rather grand, rather sedate, glamorous people letting their hair down, because I defy anyone not to want to dance when this record is on, and I've seen some very, very unexpected people doing impromptu dances to this song.
And at first you think it's the same thing over and over again, but it becomes fascinating as you listen to it, because in fact it changes texture every so often, but you can hardly tell when the textures change. How they do it, I don't know, but I am I'm uh lost in admiration for them.
I Can't Give You Anything But Love
Well, it has to be a bit of Marlena, doesn't it? Um this it was recorded at the Queen's Theatre. I saw her in Wimbledon in nineteen seventy five. This is about this was recorded about ten years before that, and it's her singing I Can't Give You Anything But Love.
Oh yes, well, Monty Python, the boys doing the story of Oliver Cromwell.
September (from Four Last Songs)
Gundula Janowitz with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan
I'm a very keen gardener, very keen gardener. And the only time of year when I feel a bit melancholy is in September. This is a song about the garden going to sleep, which is a time of year I'm trying to love.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:08Was Welsh your first language?
Yes, it was. … I mean, I knew how to speak English through listening to the wireless, but nobody in my neighbourhood or at school spoke English.
Presenter asks
3:48Was it that childhood success [at the National Eisteddfod] that led to your first broadcast?
Yes, it was actually. But the first time I was lucky enough to win at the Nationalised Air Force, which was of course much grander than everything I'd been doing up until then. Someone from the BBC happened to be on the Isethvod field that day and took me back to the studio to repeat that uh dramatic recitation I had just given.
Presenter asks
9:57Have you tried to plan your career, Sian, by going from commercial theatre to subsidized theatre?
No, I haven't. I've I've always found it very, very difficult. Every time I make an arrangement it falls to pieces, so I thought I'd just trundle along behind the fates, as it were. And it seems to work out that one dots from one thing to another fairly comfortably.
The keepsakes
The book
The Medical Care of Merchant Seamen
William L. Wheeler
Very good for rickets. And well, it's good for everything, believe me. So I'll have that.
The luxury
unlimited supply of paper and pencils
I can't think without a pencil in my hand. So I would like an unlimited supply of paper and pencils, please.
Presenter asks
18:43Was it pretty hard to think yourself into that part [of Livia in I, Claudius]?
Initially it was Herbert Weiss and the author, Jack Pullman, were very helpful to me because they said you've just got to stop. Trying to be a a person you would recognize, you've got to. Think of something extraordinary among the most powerful, richest people in the world. … Nobody has that kind of power, that kind of wealth any more. So it was quite difficult to … be rude to servants for a start.
Presenter asks
1:26What is it that you've arrived at [when you say you've arrived where you really wanted to be]?
Well, when I was a little girl, I had a picture in my mind of this this grown up lady um living in a very nice uh place, a house or a flat, in a town, and acting all the time. But there weren't any other people in this flat, and I it was pretty odd for a little girl, I suppose. I had no ambition at all to get married… or to have children. I just wanted to be an actress and have a very nice life.
Presenter asks
2:52What woke up the dream of being on the stage?
Well, I I know that I first decided I wanted to be an actress when I was about six, because I wrote it down and my mother kept this little rather serious pronouncement. And also, around about that time I had been to a theater in Swansea. And I had seen my first show, which was a pantomime, and my grandmother, who was a very, very strict religious woman, and a farmer and had never been to a theatre ever and rather disapproved of it. But she and I, the two ends of the family spectrum, were captivated. We came out starry-eyed.
Presenter asks
11:37What did your teetotal, frugal family make of Peter O'Toole?
They just adored him. They absolutely loved him. I mean, they may have been. teetotal, though they're not now then, but they were also um very fun loving. I mean, there was a lot of fun going on, and of course, if you wanted fun, he was the right person to provide it.
Presenter asks
18:31Why did you leave [Peter O'Toole]?
I'd think it had run its course. I wanted something. More, I think, in the relation. I think we had got stuck in certain attitudes that were very difficult to break. I mean, he is a very independent person. He had been very ill, and I'd nursed him through a very uh uh an illness which could have been a terminal. And I'd I'd really broken my heart at the time because I was afraid that he was that she was going to die. And I, for some reason, came out of it different. I can't quite explain it, but I wanted to move forward in The relationship, but I could see that it was going to go back to being exactly the same as it had been before the illness. I suddenly thought, No, I I don't think this is right.
Presenter asks
21:57How did you know you could hack it [after walking away from your marriage]?
I didn't. I really didn't. But I've done this a few times in my life. I don't mean in those circumstances, but I d I don't find it that difficult to do… I quite like a new beginning. I did not know if I could hack it at all, because my confidence was not at its highest, I must say.
“I play very badly with great feeling.”
“I've always found it very, very difficult. Every time I make an arrangement it falls to pieces, so I thought I'd just trundle along behind the fates, as it were.”
“I come in and out of plays so fast that very often I'm writing the thank you notes for the previous play when I'm rehearsing the next one.”
“I am really happier than I have been since I was about fifteen or sixteen.”
“I stopped arguing with anybody about what I wanted to do, but I never ever doubted in my mind that I would do it.”
“I would not like to be in an exclusive. relationship. Again, I I really find it too Completely annihilating, really.”