YouSaid · the spoken record

John Copley

lines on the record: 45
first: 2010-01-03
most recent: 2010-01-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I'd like Grove's Dictionary of Music. which is actually twenty volumes, but I'm sure I can't have that. But there is one volume that's come out in the last few years, which is an operatic, and it would be quite good because I'd be able to read about all the things everybody else has done.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was one of the loveliest people, and you just hear this sound that she makes, and it's a poem, it's a wind and a sail carried off our thoughts to a sea where tenderness is, the counterpart of music and light, our kisses became transparent, you the water, I was the mirror. It's rather an obscure, but that's what the song's about.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's going to be Victoria de Los Angeles singing a song by Momp. I mean I saw her so many times in opera on the concert platform. I was lucky enough to direct her in New York in my figuro at the New York City opera and she came in to do a few performances and she worked so hard for three weeks and we adored her she was full of sunshine and full just the loveliest woman you could imagine. It's very like Janet. She brought sunshine into the room and after three weeks she found that she couldn't really manage the Dovisono Aria. It was just slightly beyond her and she came and she did have tears in her eyes and she said I can't do it. I'm not good enough. I can't offer my public at this point something that is not good enough so I have to say goodbye and we all absolutely cried in the room we were all absolutely choked and that was the last time.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They are and I mean the one thing that I know that I am good at, and this is why I teach a lot I can show them and help them to do love on stage. I know technically how to do that. But I mean I've had the most blessed life anybody could ever imagine. I mean I've had a blessed life. I've done what I wanted to do and somehow people along the way thought I'd got something if it was only enthusiasm, I suppose. And that plus a fantastic partner who I've had for fifty years in my life I don't think I could have been happier.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well this spiritual Samalantine prize is the most glorious singing, it's the most glorious voice. It's a very simple text. She's got the whole world in his hands. We were talking earlier about when I was playing that duet with Shulty. I definitely felt that somebody was actually looking after me and I think somebody's looked after me and I worked with Leanting Price once at Colant Garden and she was quite extraordinary and special and this voice just pouring out. It was the most beautiful sound you could imagine.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, in flight and out. Yes, I did. Yes, I gave it up in 1980. I went to AA, and I haven't drunk since, and I'm much better without it. It didn't suit me, and I was upsetting people. Some people I upset have not forgiven me. I really behave very badly, and they haven't forgiven me.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you could have grand crew wines. I mean, you didn't have just a glass or something. You could have three bottles on the flight as long as you behaved. And we tended to behave pretty well.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd enjoy it now and travel first class. But I mean, I did go to Australia. I did twenty-six productions in Sydney Opera House. So, I mean, I was going to Australia sometimes four times a year on Qantas, first class with all that fantastic food and wine. I mean, that was glorious. You know, you'd arrive in Sydney at six o'clock in the morning completely drunk, you know.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I read them if they're nice and if they're nasty I read them later, and if you get a set of really bad reviews it does affect you and it affects your psyche.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was there when the midtermite stream was being done for the first time and the director was not well and he hadn't had time to prepare it very well. So I would do quite a lot of rehearsing behind the scenes and I do feel a little bit a part of it because I was able to talk to Ben, you know, to find out what he wanted.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's Tom Allen, Sir Thomas Allen, no less. He was the first Chon in my Boem, the first one, and he was immediately struck me as a wonderful performer and actor, and somebody I liked enormously, who's just the most lovely, lovely man. And we've been great friends and we've done a huge amount of work. And I just thought this was unusual and piece to take with me. It's not opera. It's a song, an English song set by Benjamin Britton. Just have a little bit of Benjamin Britton on the island because I had a terrific time with Benjamin Britton at Aldborough and I did lots and lots of his operas. Again, he taught me a huge amount. I mean, I could tip it and Benjamin Britton I spend lots of time with. Can you imagine?”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I only had three pounds a week I was terribly poor. I sort of had baked beans on toast once a day and had to decide whether it was lunch or supper. But I never seemed that never seemed to worry me. I do remember being poor and not having enough to eat. I mean I never want to be poor again.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought I'd die You're hopeless, and I'm having you transferred to the opera, she said. You do better there, she said. Of course you're quite right, and I started as a student, and I went to the Central School of Arts and Crafts one or two sessions a day and the other sessions were at Covent Garden, watching people direct, watching lighting rehearsals, watching everything that was connected, orchestra rehearsals, and I just, as I said, caught it like the measles, and I couldn't have been happier. And I'd been in lots of the operas. I mean, I was Prince of Persia in Turandot, I was the boy in Peter Grimes, I was in lots and lots of operas. And when I went to Saddleswell's I was only twenty one as a stage manager, I actually knew how to do it because I had watched everybody doing it.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, a valid answer Yes, sorry. All the talk of pansies rather. I probably do want to be a ballerina, but I Yes, and I went to the Royal Ballet School, and I didn't do terribly well, and I gave lectures to the other students on opera because we were in lots of operas and nobody really explained what we were doing. And she sent for me one day and she said, You see, Copley, I have to tell you, she said, it's marvellous, mother's voice that everybody imitates. I've got to tell you you're absolutely hopeless.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a slow movement. And I knew I could do that. I knew I was safe with that. And it did go very well. And at the end of that he just started turning the pages from the beginning. Now we go from the beginning and do it properly, and I really thought terrifying. I was terrifying, and I did have somebody looking after me that night, whoever it is up there, just put his hand on my shoulder, and I did play it, and I didn't make a mistake. And I've never been able to play it since without a mistake here or there. And it was fine, and he came over, he gave me a hug, and he said, if you can do that, then we don't have problems with Cosifante. We didn't. And he became like a dad to me. He became a musical dad. Oh, I just loved him to dance.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh I would have been twenty eight or twenty nine mean he wanted to work with Visconti and Sir Peter Hall I mean Shulti wanted star names, you know to match him Anyway it was agreed that he would come to my house and have dinner, and he gave me a list of what he could eat and what he couldn't eat, which is much more. We had so Veronique, I remember very well, and then he looked at the model and the costume designs, and he was absolutely enchanted. He did think it looked exactly the way he wanted it to look. And we went downstairs for some coffee, and we were in the room with two pianos. And he said, Oh, let us blow, John, you have the Mozart, let us play this. And I thought we've had a good dinner. He's loved the model. It's going to be catastrophe if I play this Mozart with him. And I sort of said, oh, well, we'll do the middle movement, Maestro, and you can have the upright piano and I'll play on the grand.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when Sir David Webster said I should direct Cusifantute, Shalti thought I was not ready for it. He didn't want me to do it. How old was it?”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the maestros, they are another thing altogether. But you see, I've been spoiled. And then when I started directing I had Shalty, and then I had wonderful Sir Colin Davis and Sir Charles McCarris. I mean, for God's sake, I've done most of my stuff with those men who are superlative. I mean, you can't do better than that.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I've still got productions in the Met repertoire. I've still got things in San Francisco or Chicago. I've got contracts up till 2012 in America.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, absolutely. Oh, I'm so unfashionable now Are you? Yes, oh absolutely. Oh yes, I've done my thing. I mean Bo M goes on relentlessly, which is lovely it's in his thirty fifth year this year but no I don't I think all these wonderful young people there are lots and lots of young people they've got to have their chance”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I just gone totally blank. I had a terrible conductor in a small scale opera I did in America, and he just couldn't do it, and I went to the management and said, you know, he can't do it. And they said, oh, we know that, but he's going to do it because he paid for the whole thing. You know, giant, he paid for you too. So he was just stuck, and the Metzoprano, who says smart, she put a tap like a tap shoe. She wore a tap shoe, and she tapped her way through the Arya so that the orchestra could hear this metronome tapping away. And by the time we did the first night everybody had tap shoes, and it was like they tapped us their way through. A West End show?”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On, and you have to put up with it. And this aria would make me think, you know, perhaps I'm going to be rescued from this island. Perhaps a boat is going to come in.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think it's Dame Janet Baker singing from Ariodante. Janet and I have a very, very special relationship. We are like brother and sister, and I choreograph at the very first big show she did in London with Joan Cross, and we've just become very, very close friends. I admire her. I can't tell you how much I admire her. And this Arya from Ariodante, I want it on the desert island because it's about coming out of a terrible, terrible time. The opera is about treachery, it's about dreadful things happening, and then it all resolves itself, and it's very much for me like my life. I mean working in opera. It's a very difficult world, and there's a lot of EMS, envy, malice, and spite in it, and a lot of treachery. I mean, over fifty years, I can't tell you some of the treachery that goes.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was very, very nice, yes. And we had a wonderful day and everybody came, all our friends, our dear, dear friends, some of whom are singing today, came and supported us, and I think people were very glad. And I just think that we do have a bond. We're sort of linked and does make a difference. Of course it makes a difference.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father died quite soon, my mother was very jealous because he was very well bred and he was posh, so my mother rather wished it had been her.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I do remember lots of people saying, Oh, those two seem to be doing something, give them about three weeks or six weeks or something, and then we saw all these people divorcing and splitting up and, you know, over now, you know, fifty years.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How did you meet? We met in the office. He was stage managing at Covent Garden, and he was sitting at my desk. I walked eyes a bit aggressive under who's that sitting at my desk and I walked across in a rather aggressive way and he just looked up and said I'm terribly sorry am I in your way? And I said no stay there and he stayed there for nearly fifty years so that's it.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's Elfitzgerald and this is another singer that I absolutely am crazy about, and I think the Rogers and Heart songs are just irresistible. It's a very romantic song, and I'm very connected and concerned about love in people's lives. And I think if you listen to this, it touches your heart, which is what life should be about, really.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely totally involving I saved up all my money, I did a newspaper round or worked in a green grocery shop at weekends to get money so that I could buy records, I could go to the theatre, and I saw all these amazing people. I mean it was all I was interested in.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it was a performance by Sadderswell's opera on tour during the war and it was Joan Cross was singing Mimi, an Arthur's servant was singing Rudolph, and can you believe that I can remember that?”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't know. I picked up very early on that if you're doing the leading role in something, you are different. Now that sounds so conceited and megamaniacal. But, you know, if you're doing Eliza Doolittle, you're the leading lady, and you get more attention and you get better frocks, and you have more rehearsal.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was the music, you know, the church music attracted me tremendously, and I thought it would be, it was a sort of escape, you know, if I was in the priest business, it was okay. You know, music in terms of the church was okay.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well, my father would come to London to umpire hockey matches or he'd go to Amsterdam or wherever, and my mother and I would stay in London for the weekend. We went to the theatre, and we went to Covent Garden and we saw the sleeping beauty. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and when Marguerfontaine did the Rosadagio and she did those balances on point with her arms so beautifully arched, I did actually I nearly died and I thought I'm going to work in this place. I don't care whether I'm a lavatory cleaner or what I was absolutely in those few minutes it made a huge change in my life and I got there eventually I'm still there”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, I don't never thought of that. I've been an interested boy. I mean, I've always wanted to do it. I've always gone out and done it, clawed my way through. I mean, I'm not very bright, I'm not very well educated, and I don't have a very good brain, but I've got a very good instinct, and I've got a determination, which is scary”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, no. It was in the 40s, and you were expected to go out and play football. I mean, I played hockey and I played rugby and I didn't mind those. But I love the theatre and I was in the school choir and I sang solo and I was at church. I mean, I went to church all the time and I sang solo in the church. So my love of music started, I don't know where it came from.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he thought it was pansy. And I wasn't going out and kicking in football. Anyway, I ended up as a parent to say it didn't really help.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, he was very much involved with cricket and hockey. He was an international hockey umpire, and my brother, my elder brother, who is extremely handsome, was a wonderful cricketer. So I was always the ugly duckly.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where I went to King Edward's school and I had a good time it was during the war, and we did lots and lots of plays because it was a boy school, I generally did the girls parts. I did Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalia, and I did Helena in Midsummer Stream, which I didn't like very much because I wasn't the leading lady in. And I did Lady M in the Scottish play. And then I left, then I went to the Royal Ballist School, so that was the end of my dramatic career.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I did say to her I just loved this recording, and she said yes, it's one of the ones that I was happy with. And when I listened to her, even now after all these years, I can always tell from the sound she makes what she's thinking. It's always very, very clear her mix of text and music, which is what obsesses me, and all the singers that I've chosen to take to the island are singers who don't just make sounds, they make sounds with text.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Maria Callas had an enormous effect on me in nineteen sixty four, a very important year. I had already directed Tosca three times at Covent Garden, but this was the new production with Zephyri, and I was the assistant, and I was very thrilled to be his assistant because it was going to be him and it was going to be Maria Callas and Godby, and I just I couldn't wait. And she was terribly nice to me, and I learnt an enormous amount. And then she was ill for the three orchestra rehearsals, and we didn't have an understudy. And I actually was the only one who knew it, knew what she did, and I did know the part absolutely backwards, and so I did all her rehearsals for her with orchestra. And out of that came my first new production because the management were all there. And I think I had saved their bacon, actually, because they couldn't have done the rehearsals if I hadn't been there. I got a reward I got my first new production”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could sometimes stamp my foot a little bit and say, no, come on, Luciani, you can't do that. But you have to be very careful because he was. We worked in Berlin. We did Lisidamori in Berlin, and I think we got the Guinness Book of Records for the longest applause for any opera performance. It went on for about fifty five minutes or something at the end of the show, and he was quite pleased about that. I remember him picking up the phone'cause Herbert his agent wasn't there, and he said Allah Herbert not here and he said all I can tell you Herbert not here but I can tell you we start in one million that's without the t shirt And I said to him You don't mean one million a performance he said Yeah, but without a t shirt merchandise extra So that was as Amazing moment.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's like all famous people they will tell you it's the pressure on them to give what is sometimes so difficult. You know he was perfectly ordinarily educated boy and I'm afraid it did go to his head eventually and you know he was so famous I mean what else do you expect?”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he was a lovely lad, and he was rather lonely, he hadn't been to London before, and he came to our house, and he used to go to Soho and bring a big bag of groceries and cook pasta sauce, and we'd get the ballet girls round'cause he was very keen on the ballet girls, and he'd sing a bit, and I played a piano for him, and they were just he was so very informal, and he was just a lovely, lovely guy.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You mean the people I've dealt? Oh well, of course, some of them are ferocious big girls, you know. I mean some of them are quite scary.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the introduction to this program was used in a pantomime which my parents took me went to the panto always, and it was and it was the ballet sequence and I went home and I was already theatre mad and I learnt a little dance that went to it so whenever the desert iron discs came on I used to get up and do my little dance and my father would give me a great clout's blouse.”
2010-01-03 · Desert Island Discs · John Copley · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source