Hello I'm Krestey 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 1996 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My cast away this week is an opera singer you may never have heard of her. She's opera's forgotten voice, which today,

thanks to the release of some previously unknown recordings, has reached a large new audience of admirers.

Now 80, she was born in Russia just before the revolution. She's known

poverty and hardship as well as some success. She's sung with geely gobby and

Bergenzi and been abandoned by lovers and managers alike, but her voice has stayed

with her.

How is it possible, asked one reviewer after her first CD was recently released, that such a singer has not come down as one of the

centuries most celebrated sopranos. She is Kirra Vane. The reception of these

recordings has been ecstatic, Kirra here why isn't she a

superstar another critic asks it must be a very bittersweet experience for you

which is totally can you accept it it's been difficult, very difficult, but I have accepted it now. I'm fine now. I'm enjoying it.

But it's been quite an emotional business. Oh, tremendous, tremendous. I mean, when the CD the project started I was panic-stricken and I begged

the powers that be not to do it because I thought I would be ridiculed

That I thought my voice would be torn to shreds and the CDs would gather dust

And then one by one the reviews came and they were all unanimous and I spent my time having hysterics.

But what they can't understand the question that keeps being asked is why was this voice which is obviously one of the

greats another one has said why was it ignored why was it never recorded what's the

answer to that question well that, bad management, I think, A, and lack of perception, I think from the point of view of agents

and the establishment.

It's interesting because some of the experts who are now

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