Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A Welsh tenor who won the Nationalized Elva Blue Ribbon Competition.
On the island
Eight records
The reason for taking this would be simply that I would remember the time that it was made in Vienna.
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:08What part of Wales do you come from, sir?
Well, I was born in a little village called Kilvanyed, which is near the town of Pont de Pries. It's a famous town where Tom Jones was born and where Garrant Evans was born. Kilvernith actually. Garrant was born in the same village, same street, yes. It's a mining area, isn't it? A mining village it was. It is not now what it was.
Presenter asks
1:07What, in fact, did you take up as your first profession?
Well, of general subjects in a primary school in Wales.
Presenter asks
3:32The blue ribband at the I Steadford must have meant you were offered some good concert engagement.
Yes, I mean this uh this meant that uh winning this prize would um almost automatically uh ensure a career of uh twelve months of concert work.
Presenter asks
4:56Now what was the occasion that led to you becoming a full time singer?
Well, during this period, nineteen sixty three sixty four I did quite a lot of broadcasting and television and and I did Puccini's Labo M with John Carlyle for BBC television and uh Somehow or other Stravinsky got to hear of this and asked for me to sing. At Athens. In Oedipus Rex, the role of Oedipus. I think this was the turning point because um Everything happened overnight, so to speak, from that moment on.
Presenter asks
6:48Stuart, it's only six or seven years since you became a professional singer, and already you're one of the most sought-after international lyric tenants. What's happening next?
Happening next. What I'm doing is a table-floated performance. In Vienna Don Giovanni. And then a recital tour of the United States.
“I never had ambition. To be a singer. I knew I could sing.”
“I'll never forget actually having the letter to say that Maestro Jar Schulte would like you to sing The First Prisoner.”
“It is quite something to me then to think that from teaching in a small village school that I would be singing on the stage at Covent Garden.”
“Only in Vienna.”