John Wilson

You gave your last opera performance in 2025 at the Paris Opera and a final solo recital of works by Poulenc and Cole Porter and Noel Coward and others on a solo recital bill.

I mean, were they very poignant evenings?

Looking back, is there one particular role or a performance that you're most proud of?

I mean, with everything that you're having to deal with, has that led to some kind of reflection on not only your life, but your career on the stage, your achievements, everything you've done?

Lovely use for those dresses, isn't it?

And in these current circumstances, dealing with the effects of cancer, what role does music play at home?

Is it there for support or solace or inspiration?

Did your career turn out the way that you thought it might when you were first setting out onto the opera stage?

No!

You couldn't have imagined any of this?

Felicity, thank you very much indeed for sharing your cultural life with us.

Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which leading artistic figures reveal the influences and experiences that most inspired their own creativity.

I'm John Wilson and my guest in this episode is the author Michael Frayn.

Over a seven decade career, Frayn has been acclaimed as a novelist, a playwright, a journalist, translator and memoirist.

From his comedies, including the stage-fast Noises Off, a screenplay for Clockwise starring John Cleese, and the novels Headlong and Skioss, to the complex political, historical and scientific themes of his stage plays Democracy and Copenhagen, he's been prolific in a diverse array of genres and subjects.

He's also renowned for his stage adaptations of Russian classics, including several works by Anton Chekhov.

At 92, Michael Frayn advised on a recent revival of Copenhagen at the Hampstead Theatre.

Michael Frayne, welcome to This Cultural Life, or I should say, thank you for welcoming us into your home.

Well, thank you very much for coming here.

I'm really interested, Michael, looking around your library, looking at the shelves, just as there are so many facets to your writing, so many different themes, they seem to be ordered by theme on the shelves.