John Wilson

Did you know much about opera at the time?

So no exposure to opera?

You weren't taken to...?

And what were you, just under six foot?

Why do you think the shyness is also linked to your height?

Because, I mean, a lot of tall people in childhood are trying to kind of come down because they don't want to stand out.

Your next choice for this cultural life, Felicity Lott, is France.

And your career has owed so much to French music, to operetta, to the music of Offenbach and Poulenc and to other French composers.

Do you trace all of that back to a love of the French language itself when you were young?

But you studied French, actually, rather than studying music, which is what people possibly would have expected you to have studied.

If you didn't think you could become an interpreter, what were you going to do with your French language skills?

Were you a good teacher, though?

Why?

Well, I was going to say that shyness that you talked about before.

I was desperate.

So it was about standing in front of, I've got to say that, standing in front of an audience.

A classroom is an audience.

So how did you, did you not worry when you moved into singing, when you started to make that move into the professional world of singing, that that is a big part of the job, standing in front of people?

But what was the transition then from teaching to singing?

I see.