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Chapter 1: What influenced Felicity Lott's early musical career?
Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which the world's leading artistic figures choose the influences and experiences that have most inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson, and my guest in this episode is one of Britain's best-loved sopranos, Dame Felicity Lott.
After a breakthrough role in the Magic Flute in 1975, she built an international career, performing at opera houses and concert halls all around the world, singing works by composers including Strauss, Schubert and Mozart. At home, she was seen frequently on television, starred at many BBC Proms concerts, and was made a Dame in 1996.
She was also the recipient of the Légion d'honneur, France's highest cultural award. Following a recent diagnosis of cancer at an advanced stage, Felicity Lott came to BBC Broadcasting House to look back on her distinguished career in music.
Chapter 2: How did Felicity Lott's health impact her reflections on her career?
Felicity Lott, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you so much. It is really wonderful to have you with us here today. How are you feeling, given the state of your health?
Well, just at the moment, pretty good, I have to say. They've just put me on steroids and I think I wish I'd been on them all my life because I feel quite lively and awake. I'll probably disprove that as we go through this, but anyway. No, I'm in an extremely good place and I can't understand it because I'm not very well.
Chapter 3: What role did Felicity Lott's parents play in her musical upbringing?
I've had... Well, I had a dreadful diagnosis last year which knocked me flat. It certainly isn't great now, but... It's been amazing. I've had the time to think and to look back and think, my goodness, you lucky girl. You've met all these wonderful people and you've had a wonderful life. You've been all over the world. Oh, I can't believe my luck.
Well, I'm going to be encouraging you to do some more looking back over the course of this interview.
Chapter 4: How did Felicity Lott transition from teaching to singing professionally?
Your first choice of creative influence for this cultural life is your parents. Were they a big musical influence on you?
Yes, but they were amateur musicians. My dad played sort of pub piano. He could sit down and play anything on the piano. Not quite anything, no.
Well, sing songs.
Beethoven, not so much.
More sing songs?
More sing songs. Musical? Yes, I'll be loving you always and all those kind of things. A, you're adorable. B, you're so beautiful.
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Chapter 5: What was Felicity Lott's experience performing at the English National Opera?
You know, all the words of those. And my mother had a lovely voice and she used to sing... One fine day, un bel day from Puccini's whatever that's from.
So this was an upbringing in Cheltenham.
That's right.
In Gloucestershire.
Yes. There was a field at the bottom of the garden and a railway that ran along the line at the bottom of that field. And it was, in my memory, very happy. There was always music at home. They were always rehearsing something downstairs when I was going to sleep or trying to... I took quite a long time to arrive. They got married in 1941, I think. And I turned up in 47.
And my mother had a little girl to dress up and she used to enter me for dressing up competitions.
I read that your father was the youngest of five himself. He grew up in an orphanage, I read. So not a privileged family background.
No. He had a jolly hard start, my dad, because he was sent off to the railway workers' orphanage in Derby, which was pretty hard in those days. It was actually a good school. They had school uniform and they had great discipline. He told stories about coming down and breaking the ice in the wash basins and swapping around the crusts of bread. It was quite Dickensian sounding.
Where did he learn music then? Was he self-taught?
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Chapter 6: How did Richard Strauss influence Felicity Lott's career?
And what about her creative influence on you as a girl? You say she sang and she was singing arias. It was Madame Butterfly you were singing.
Yes. Yes, she sang that, but she also sang lots of popular songs. Dad wrote a song for her. She recorded it. My sister found it. But she took me to Cavendish House in Cheltenham and you could record a voice. This is way back in 1949. So when you were two? When I was two. I recorded for my grandmother's Christmas present, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Had a very shiny nose And if you ever saw it You would even say it glows All of the other reindeer Used to laugh and call him
I mean, do you recognise it as you? Is there something about the tone, the delivery in any way?
I don't recognise it as me. It's all in tune, which is quite surprising. I've got another recording which I looked for but failed to find when I was 12. I sort of recognise that, but it's frightfully posh.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Felicity Lott face as a tall soprano?
So it's, I knew an elf in the Burnham tree, swaying so tenderly, swaying so low. It's really funny. I couldn't find it anyway.
You had elocution lessons.
I had every lesson in the book. I think my mother was determined she would make something out of me. Elocution lessons, piano lessons, singing lessons as soon as anybody would teach me and violin lessons.
So you were her project teacher?
Yes. And I was an only child for eight and a half years. And then my sister arrived.
So there's a lot invested in you at a young age.
Yes.
So a lot of expectations. Did you enjoy all those lessons?
Not the piano lessons, because they were with a great aunt who lived in a very dark, frightening house. And she had a grey parrot called Joseph. I hated going there. And when I played the wrong notes on the piano, as I mostly did, she would wrap me over the fingers with a wooden ruler. So, I mean, what's to like about that?
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Chapter 8: How does Felicity Lott reflect on her legacy and career achievements?
It was all girls then.
Did you have extracurricular singing lessons or was it just at school?
I think Mum sent me for singing lessons when I was about 12. Outside school, yes. And she said, it's too early to teach you to sing, but I'll teach you to breathe, which is actually quite a useful thing to learn how to do.
I was going to say, that stands you in good stead as an opera singer, doesn't it? Absolutely. It's so much about breathing.
Yes.
But if this talent was spotted at such a young age and you were, you know, this perfect pitch at the age of two, were you already as a child thinking, I might be able to be a singer, I might make a living out of this as a grown-up?
Absolutely not. I didn't correspond in any way to my idea of what a singer should be, what she should look like. I was tall and gawky and I wore specs. And we'd watch musicals on the TV with people like Mitzi Gaynor and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and they didn't look like me at all.
Did you know much about opera at the time?
No.
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