Producer and TV director Nigel Wattis directed the film biography of incomparable soprano Kiri Te Kanawa. Melvyn Bragg, as narrator, leads us through the singer’s life, and talks to her about her life and career, while other artist personalities such as George Solti, Dame Joan Sutherland, Richard Bonynge, Jeffrey Tate, Stephen Barlow and John Hopkins add their personal impressions. This portrait, dedicated to Kiri Te Kanawa’s teacher of many years, Vera Rozas, was filmed in 1991, and accompanies the soprano through a whole year. It follows her on trips to New Zealand and the San Francisco Opera, where she was preparing her role in Strauss’ Capriccio. The film includes recordings of her in excerpts from arias by Handel, Mozart, Charpentier, Puccini and Cilèa, as well as in the final scene of Capriccio, and in songs by Richard Strauss.
Mark Morris
Morris is a brilliantly creative choreographer whose musicality and almost classical regard for form have led him to be hailed as the successor to the late George Balanchine, the doyen of twentieth-century dance. This programme was made when he was the resident choreographer at La Monnaie in Brussels. It focuses on his highly-acclaimed ballet L’allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato. He is also seen creating a new work in rehearsal, with dancers including Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Barry Humphries
Barry Humphries’ creations, Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, remain two of comedy’s most popular figures. In this programme, the elusive comedian talks at length about the early influences that led him into his extraordinary career. There is library film of Mrs. Everage’s early television performances in Australia, as well as footage of Dame Edna on stage and, naturally, the antipodean superstar appears in person to comment on her alter ego.
William Golding
Whether about boys marooned on a desert island (Lord of the Flies), the birth of prehistoric man (The Inheritors), or the building of Salisbury cathedral’s spire (The Spire),
Golding’s novels combine gripping story-telling with a profound examination of the nature of man and the mysterious forces that work upon him. The Nobel Prize-winning author gave this rare television interview in 1989, four years before his death at the age of eighty-one. He focuses on the trilogy of novels spawned by his Booker Prize-winning Rites of Passage, and extensive dramatised extracts from the final part, Fire Down Below, are included.
Henrik Ibsen
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal has long been a thorn in the side of the American establishment, which he goads constantly with his liberal opinions, his controversial political analyses and his incisive wit. In interview, Vidal – as outspoken as ever – discusses his work and the birth and death of the American empire.
Marcel Proust
Luigi Pirandello
Fyodor Dostojewski
The Theatre of Comedy
Farce has always been a vital ingredient of British theatre and one of the successes in the genre was Ray Cooney’s Theatre of Comedy Company. This programme looks at the chemistry of farce. It takes the form of a studio workshop, with Cooney and some of his leading actors performing and discussing extracts from his plays, including Run for Your Wife.