Danielle de Niese

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2018

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Danielle de Niese is a soprano who has taken starring roles with leading opera companies around the world. She was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Sri Lankan parents, and at the age of eight she won a national TV talent show, singing a pop medley. When she was ten, her parents moved the family to Los Angeles, so that she could pursue her dream of becoming an opera singer. She also presented a TV programme, L.A. Kids, for which she won an Emmy award at the age of 16. She made her professional operatic debut when she was 15 with the Los Angeles Opera, appeared briefly in Les Miserables on Broadway, and first performed with the Metropolitan Opera in New York at the age of 19, taking the role of Barbarina in a production of The Marriage of Figaro, directed by Jonathan Miller. In 2005 she came to more widespread public attention with her performances as Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne, stepping into the role at the last minute when the original Cleopatra was unwell. She first appeared at the Royal Opera House in London four years later, and her international stage career now ranges from baroque operas to new works. She has also presented a number of television programmes about music. She married Gus Christie, the grandson of Glyndebourne’s founder, in 2009. Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Sarah Taylor

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.2	Hello, I'm Kristi Young.
0:04.8	Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks,
0:10.0	the book and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.
0:16.0	For rights reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast.
0:22.4	You can find over 2,000 more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Discs website.
0:30.0	My cast away today is the opera singer Danielle Denise, a diva fit for our times. Her
0:55.0	political performances and charismatic presence have made her a star.
0:59.9	One somehow gets the feeling that she was always headed for the top. As a young child,
1:05.0	she won singing competitions in her homeland of Australia. And once the family moved to America,
1:10.4	she had at 15 her professional debut with the Los Angeles Opera. Just four years later,
1:17.6	she was gracing the stage of the Met in New York. But her big break came at Glimeborne.
1:23.7	And if it were not the stuff of public record, it would sound made up by a Hollywood script writer.
1:29.5	In 2005, the soprano scheduled to play Cleopatra fell ill, in step to my plucky cast away and
1:36.2	stole the show. It was seems she not only wowed the crowd and the critics, but the owner too.
1:42.4	She later married the man for whom Glimeborne has always been the family home.
1:47.8	She says, when you share your interpretation of music, you are bearing your soul to the audience,
1:53.9	transporting them to a different place and time. You give people part of yourself and you need
2:00.0	to be willing to take the risk to be truly great. That sounds terrifying. It does sound terrifying.
2:08.0	Is it? It is terrifying in that thrilling way. I get nervous and I often think,
2:15.1	why do we keep doing those to ourselves, go back out into the lion's den, you know, to this stage.
2:19.4	This great unknown. I mean, there's so many things that can happen. You have said also that
	...

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