Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1998, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a singer. He was well on the way to becoming an engineer

when he decided to take singing lessons. So instead of building tunnels, he went to

Glinebourne and began building a career on the English opera scene.

He sang more than 50 different roles of the ENO before being coaxed into the part which has made him internationally famous.

Votan, ruler of the gods in Wagner's ring cycle.

He sung it at by Royte, Berlin and Covent Garden where his pure bass voice has thrilled audiences

for ten years now, and the composer's grandson has gone on record as saying that Wagner might have written it with him in mind.

My costway is more cautious.

You go on stage and sing, he says.

If you worry about what might happen in three hours time, you'd go slightly mad.

He is John Tomlinson.

It is, John though, a tour to force, isn't it, singing the Ring of Cycles.

Have you ever worked out how many hours you're on stage during the course of it?

It varies from production to production, but possibly about six hours I think.

Two hours in Rheingale, two hours in Valcure, two hours in Zecret approximately.

But in comparison with any other role in opera, it's huge, I mean you're on stage, aren't you, for longer periods?

Yes, the normal entrance in a in a Wagner opera is about an hour

whereas let's say in a Mozart opera you may expect to be on stage for 20 minutes

half an hour yes but of course the intervals are much greater in Bayreuth, aren't they?

In Byreuth the intervals are a full hour and personally I like that because it's time really to relax and come down before getting the

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