Kathleen Ferrier: An Ordinary Diva

She's been dead so long, and yet is so well remembered.

Yes, it's extraordinary, but she was unique.

I remember just staggering up the stairs into the daylight

and thinking, "My God, I've never heard anything like that

"before in my life."

She was not spoilt by success. My gosh, she was a star.

I don't think I've ever heard anything quite so human and basic as the sound she produced.

Terribly moving and it reaches right in there which was her great gift, of course.

When Kathleen Ferrier died at the age of 41 in October 1953,

she was as famous as the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth.

In just 12 short years, she had climbed from nowhere to sing at the the world's greatest concert halls,

working with the world's finest conductors and musicians.

She combined a glorious voice with a remarkable ability to communicate with an audience.

And yet, she somehow always remained "Our Kath" -

a northern girl with a heart as big as a boot.

'Microphone, here I come!'

"If anyone had told me when I was 20, that at 32 I should be dashing about singing at concerts,

"I should have laughed my head off.

"I should have said that no-one could make a career in music without going to the Royal Academy.

"And anyway, that it was much too risky a way of earning a living.

"Now here I am. Fantastico, isn't it?"

PEOPLE LAUGH

Kathleen. Kath. Clever Kaff. Not so clever Kaff.

Clever question mark Kaff. Katie. Our Kath.

Kathleen Ferrier was born in Higher Walton, just outside Blackburn in 1912.

# Blow the wind Southerly southerly southerly

# Blow the wind South o'er the bonnie blue sea

# Blow the wind Southerly southerly southerly

# Blow bonnie breeze

# My lover to me. #

It seems trite to say this, but the most...

often played...extract...

is the unaccompanied folk song Blow The Wind Southerly.

And to me it...

..encapsulates her entirely.

# Where might be it

# The barque that is bearing

# My lover to me. #

You're getting the glory of this human sound,

her genius with words, and the way she makes them are Lancastrian - that roundness of vowel.

The way she sounds the words is her.

It just describes HER so exactly -

the simplicity of the person and this directness.

There is nothing like the directness of unaccompanied singing to reach the heart.

Kathleen's father was a headmaster.

Her mother, a frustrated housewife with ambitions for her children.

She had an older brother, George, and a sister, Winifred.

From the time that she could toddle, she really became the humorist of the family.

I think Kathleen inherited the best characteristics of both her parents.

Her father's happy smiling enjoyment of life.

And her mother's temperament, which could reach the heights and the depths.

# ..Safely to me. #

Kathleen's first love was the piano.

She soon became a familiar sight in Montague street swinging her music case as she went to her lesson.

Considering she had a light-hearted attitude to life, she became a different person when she played.

She went in for examinations and always passed at the first attempt.

She entered for a lot of the competitive festivals in Blackpool and Liverpool,

and the various towns in the north of England.

At this point, her singing was confined to the bathroom - much to the annoyance of her family.

I said to them, "Weren't you amazed? Didn't you all stand outside

"listening to this amazing voice?"

And Win said, "No, my father used to get annoyed and beat the door and say. 'Kath get out. Stop it!

" 'We're all waiting to get in.' " It sounded to me like a very loving, warm family.

"I think of Blackburn and my school days with deep pleasure,

"and my great regret in that I had to leave so early.

"In my particular work, how grateful I should have been for fluent French, German and Italian."

When Kathleen was a teenager, the Ferrier family fractured.

Her brother George, too often in trouble, was sent to Canada.

Her parents, worried about having to finance his return, took Kathleen out of school.

At 14, she began to work at the telephone exchange at a salary of eight shillings a week.

Two years later, she was promoted and moved to the chief engineer's office which meant regular hours,

not shift work, leaving her evenings free for her music.

Her solo piano playing was very, very good.

As time went on and she accompanied more,

I think her leanings were more to accompaniment.

She was keen on the songs by then,

and she'd sing them in various voices.

I think singing then was more than a bit there.

APPLAUSE

And our first semifinalist, please.

Your two minutes on the life of Kathleen Ferrier starting now.

Kathleen sang for a while under her married name - what was it?

-Mrs Wilson.

-Correct.

Kathleen was 21 when she met Albert Wilson, an assistant bank manager.

They shared a love of dancing and after a few months became engaged.

But as plans for the wedding went full steam ahead, Kathleen began to have her doubts.

Later, she confessed to her sister she had felt trapped and could see no way of calling the wedding off.

Winifred, for her part, always felt they were unsuited and that Bert took her sister for granted.

During this period, Kathleen took part in her first singing competition in Blackpool.

It was not a success, and soon after, she married Bert.

In Winifred's words,

Kathleen dreaded every moment of her...

I think maybe every night of her honeymoon. Which is...

Which is odd considering the honeymoon was spent with Winifred.

If you look up the Blackburn papers for the day in the '30s,

it says the happy couple left for a honeymoon in the south.

It doesn't say they left for a honeymoon with the bride's sister.

Kathleen left the Post Office after nine years, as rules prohibited married women from working.

Bert was promoted and they moved to Silloth to live above the bank.

She passed the time by giving piano lessons.

Whatever their problems, it was Bert who inadvertently set Kathleen on the path, that in a few years,

would consume almost every waking moment, giving her no time for relationships, let alone marriage.

When he bet her a shilling that she wouldn't enter the Carlisle Festival singing competition,

Kathleen couldn't resist.

# Down by the Sally gardens

# My love and I did meet

# She crossed... #

Mrs Wilson was on her way, thanks to Bert, and began to build a reputation across the north.

Two years later, she met the man who changed her voice forever.

At the Carlisle Festival in April 1939, who was the adjudicator

who declared that the beauty of her voice stood out like a beacon?

-Hutchinson.

-Correct.

As a worker, I think she was prodigious. Absolutely prodigious.

She did far much more than she should have done.

When I tell you that our lessons,

which were supposed to be half an hour...long...

..developed into, well, I know I've gone on at least an hour and a half with her at times.

We were worn out, but she wouldn't give in.

KATHLEEN SINGING

Hutchie, as Kathleen affectionately called him, recognised the quality of the instrument she possessed.

She blossomed as the lessons became the high point of her week.

When war broke out, Kathleen Wilson's life altered irrevocably.

Bert was called up, and the enforced separation effectively ended the marriage.

Kathleen was now free to pursue her career wherever it might take her.

As her voice developed, she began singing regularly across the north.

"Hello, love. I've been singing practically every weekend somewhere

"and am making my debut under Hutchie a week on Sunday

"as Kathleen Ferrier. Shivers and shivers.

"I shall need a lot of pennies that day."

Determined to succeed and always looking for opportunities,

Kathleen wrote to the BBC.

"Dear sir, I am writing to ask if I might have an audition in the near future...

"I am an contralto and include in my repertoire

"solos by Bach, Handel, Purcell, Schubert...

"Hoping to receive a favourable reply."

She was turned down.

And the report read, "Rich, clarinet-like quality voice,

"limited in range and technique at the moment. Good diction.

"Only suitable at present for small works, such as Bach songs.

"She sang completely without passion." That doesn't sound like the Kathleen Ferrier we got to know.

She may not have been good enough for the BBC,

but she was invited to join CEMA - the Council For The Encouragement Of Music And The Arts -

the organisation which did concerts to raise morale during the war.

We did a lot of village concerts,

and I remember hunting for one in North Riding of Yorkshire

with Kathleen on board.

We got hopelessly lost.

And at one point, she said I think this is the left turn,

and I said I think it looks a bit funny.

And I got out and walked straight into a river ford.

The bit she'd suggested was the village pond. It looked nice and smooth and black.

So we avoided that and found the hall.

Not a bit deterred, she said, "While you're parking the car, let me get in and get on with it."

And by the time I got in, she'd changed into her evening frock and was sailing onto the platform

as though nothing had happened.

She had performed, they had gone absolutely mad,

so she went to give an encore.

She just stood in front of these thousands of people and said,

"Art thou troubled by G F Handel?"

We kept saying, all her life, "Are you still troubled by G F Handel?"

She was a very easy musician...

I mean, she could play around with things.

She'd suddenly transpose the piece to another key and give the...

give her singer a shock, you know.

You know Maxwelton Braes Are Bonny?

-SHE PLAYS PIANO

-# Maxwelton braes are bonny... #

I used to do... # Da-da-da-dee Da-da-da... #

SHE CHANGES THE KEY

Used to tease my father very much.

'I think she was very unconscious of her charms...

'and certainly didn't try to put it over at all.

'She was awfully good-looking and...

'five foot ten tall

'and held herself well

'and remained so simple and straightforward.'

The other artists who heard her

ALL said, "You must come to London...

"..to make a career,"

and engineered it for her.

So the transition was made easy.

What wasn't easy for her was taking the plunge,

because she'd always been used to a sort of provincial, safe life.

It was an absolute step in the dark.

She hadn't yet got enough engagements to live on.

# My work is done

# My task is o'er

# And so I come

# Taking it home... #

On Christmas Eve, 1942,

Kathleen moved south to London with Winifred and their widowed father.

"We are more or less settled in. Have been in a mess with painters, electricians, joiners and plumbers,

"but we're looking posh now!

"I made my London debut last night at the National Gallery

"and oh, boy, did my knees knock!

"There was a huge crowd there and it was a bit of a facer, so I was glad when it was safely over.

"Work is rolling in and I'm pretty well booked up until the end of April,

"which is just as well, the price of rents!"

I think the war itself brought out something in this country...

The songs she sang - especially, I suppose, What Is Life? at the end of the war -

and the place that she came from

must've played a part in her appeal, as well as the beauty of her voice.

I've always felt there was a sense of Britishness, not just even Englishness, in Ferrier's songs.

# Now sleeps the crimson petal

# Now the white

# Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk... #

She had great warmth - I mean, in herself -

and a most outgoing sort of warmth and kindness,

and I think, in a curious way, that came through her singing,

so that when she was singing to an audience, she...

It sounds rather silly, I know,

but she sort of embraced them in the music that she was singing

and so they felt the warmth and love and everything that she gave out

all the time, which she did with such unstinting generosity.

She used to stride onto the platform, this tall, elegant woman -

very different kind of figure from the large prima donna they were all used to -

with a tremendous sense of...Lancashire warmth.

She gave a new impetus to performing,

in the sense that people could... somehow connect with her.

The most important factor in seeing and hearing her was the radiance...

-There was a radiance on the platform.

-It was something which marked her out.

If you'd a platform for singers,

she was the one who stood, as it were, apart.

By anyone's standards, Kathleen's rise was meteoric.

By the end of the War, she was performing, had an agent, a recording contract

and a new singing teacher, Roy Henderson. Her gamble had paid off.

She was now an artist of national repute,

good enough even for the BBC.

The BBC asked us if they could do a live broadcast

of our performance of the Messiah.

The atmosphere and the quality of the sound that came across,

especially Kathleen's...

interpretation of the words...

We were so proud of the fact that she was a Blackburn girl.

One of the things that you remember

and I think, "Oh, yes, that's our Kath."

Kathleen was working at an alarming rate.

In one month alone, she sang Handel's Messiah 17 times.

One very significant performance was at Westminster Abbey in 1943.

In the audience was Benjamin Britten.

Her voice could sing this extremely awkward music without any effort.

In the part which is usually weakest Kathleen's voice was the strongest.

# O, thou that tellest good tidings to Zion

# Get thee up into the high mountain... #

Kathleen Ferrier had a natural cavity of a mouth.

If you lobbed an apple across the room, into her mouth,

it'd go straight down her throat. She had a wonderful open throat.

Later, when Britten composed The Rape Of Lucretia,

he remembered Kathleen's voice.

"I was asked if I'd consider singing the part of Lucretia. Heavens!

"Could I even walk on stage without falling over my rather large feet?

"Not to mention having to sing at the same time!"

I think it was just

an immediate inspired and inspiring relationship, simply because

what concerned both of them, in a way, was getting the music across.

That's what she did and that, I think, he would have adored and admired

and valued above everything else, and she could do that, as we know.

# Last night

# Tarquinius

# Ravished me

# And took peace from me and

# Tore the fabric of our love... #

It was very intensive work, in those lovely surroundings,

and I don't know how many weeks they worked, but it was quite a period.

For Glyndebourne itself, it was a challenge to open with a new opera,

having in the past just done mostly Mozart.

So it was quite an adventure for them as well.

The beginning's always marvellous. She sang it beautifully.

She didn't find the music as difficult as she thought she would.

And her natural beauty, sitting there on the stage,

as soon as the curtain went up, one realised that this was Lucretia.

# My love

# Our love was too rare

# For life to toy with... #

It was only slowly, I think, that Kathleen developed the right kind of confidence for the later scenes.

"I couldn't believe how difficult it was to do the simplest arm movements

"without feeling like a windmill.

"I used to practise them everywhere. On the lawn, in my room, for hours in front of my mirror.

"It was hard going and I was an embarrassed beginner.

"At last, the dress rehearsal came

"and I had an unsuccessful struggle to change gowns and shoes in four minutes and missed my entry.

"Then, having stabbed myself,

"I fell like a hard-baked dinner roll. What a life!"

Kathleen's performance was well received. It toured nationally and marked her debut at Covent Garden.

The next year, Kathleen returned to Glyndebourne to sing Orfeo,

but this time, the experience was not so happy.

She had problems with the conductor, Fritz Stiedry.

"The stage manager brought me a lyre of heavy plywood to get used to.

"It's going to make a lovely weapon when Stiedry tries me too far.

"He won't know what hit him!

"He shrugs his shoulders in despair,

"calls me an oratorio singer and shouts himself hoarse.

"Have been doing 14 hours a day,

"but last night I went to the local with the stage manager and had a dirty big pint. It did me good."

It made quite an impact on me,

aged...12. Um...

It was a star performance.

She didn't behave like a diva and all that.

She was...

somebody who assumed the role.

She was not spoilt by success, but my gosh, she was a star!

And one felt that with her performance of Orfeo.

KATHLEEN SINGS

Kathleen's capacity for friendship was legendary -

not surprising, as she was very, VERY good company.

She was very entertaining indeed.

A great storyteller, some of them not too polite.

We used to laugh a lot when we were with her, always.

-She was great fun.

-Yeah.

You mustn't think that she was some kind of an angel.

She was angelic to work with, but she had her very, very funny side.

She told us some limericks which one cannot repeat,

because they really are very, very blue.

"There was a young lady of Nantes Tres chic et elegante

"Her hole was so small She was no good at all Except for la plume de ma tante."

In her encores, which were often folk songs, she opened up

and then, there's recordings of her singing at a party after she'd had a few, and she lets her hair down...

-What's the song?

-Will-o'-the-Wisp.

# Will-o'-the-wisp with your dancing light Where do you wander into the night?

# Will-o'-the-wisp with your dancing light? Will-o'-the-wisp!

# Will your lantern illumine for me

# Fairy rings upon a tree?

# So come! So come!

# Let's leave this world far behind

# Will-o'-the-wisp, come! Will-o'-the-wisp, come!

# Oh, come! Will-o'-the-wisp. #

LAUGHTER AND CLAPPING

There's a terrific sense of bawdiness in her, in her letters.

Lots of limericks...what you might call double entendre jokes...

Um...you get the feeling

of a woman of quite substantial appetites,

whether it's for cigarettes -

she smoked a brand called Passing Cloud, rather a superior brand, little oval cigarettes...

She drank - there's references to "dirty big pints"...

Food was a big thing for her too.

One wonders about her appetite for sex, and that's a great...mystery.

It deserves to be a mystery. It will be a mystery for ever now.

She once wrote that she was a lone she-wolf. She had a relationship

with an antiques dealer from Liverpool called Rick Davis,

but in the long run, it didn't really work out,

because she wouldn't sacrifice, or couldn't sacrifice her career.

It's not enough to be devoted.

You have to be obsessed. And when you are obsessed with your music,

then you can put the energies in

that you need to gather so that you can then give them to your audience.

One of the most important and perhaps...difficult things performers have to learn

is coming through all the technical years of struggling

to refine what they're doing, learning - it's a great learning process -

and eventually they reach a point where they're well established in the way they're going to work,

and at that point, it's a very interesting moment in their lives.

Some people walk through that final door, which takes a lot of courage,

because you are actually revealing yourself as an individual human being -

"This is what I have to say. I'm giving you this music,

"but I'm saying it in the only way I can, which is totally individual."

Somebody like Ferrier had that kind of courage to a tremendous degree.

"Whoopee!

"Blue skies, sparkling water and millions of flowers!

"Wish you could see it."

Kathleen Ferrier's first international engagement was in Holland.

It was also her very first trip abroad.

"Arrived all in one piece and enjoyed every minute.

"Ben, Peter and Eric met us at Amsterdam

"with a bouquet of roses for all the girls.

"We had tea in a cafe, and had fun pointing out which cake we wanted,

"and Ben couldn't reckon up his change at all - guilders and cents!

"Customs was easy. I was asked if I had inner tubes or bicycle tyres,

"so I said, 'No, only a spare tyre round me waist.' What a to-do."

The Dutch were enthusiastic, and her Dutch agent

immediately began planning her return as a solo artist.

It was the beginning of a love affair with Holland.

Kathleen returned again and again in her short career - three times in as many months in 1948 alone.

If there was one musical culture in Europe during this whole period, it was Holland.

Holland was ready and generous, and wanting to receive that,

particularly cos of the appalling horrors of that Nazi occupation,

which was a really terrible period for that country.

The Dutch are very musical and very faithful to the people they admire,

and the then director of the Holland Festival, Peter Diamand, was also a close friend,

and she just felt very at home there, I think.

RECORDING OF KATHLEEN SINGING

"It's simply lovely to be here, and I'm having such an easy time,

"though an average of a concert every other day.

"I've had a real rest, and feel I'm not singing so badly, and have ravishing notices.

"I get bouquets at every performance, three at the Hague, and am being ruined.

"All the clothes are on points, so there's nothing to buy.

"But it's a pleasure to walk around Amsterdam, with its canals and trees and lovely houses."

At her first solo appearance, there were only 150 people there.

What happened next was extraordinary.

A radio broadcast and an ecstatic review in a newspaper the next day

led to the remaining performances selling out within hours.

Her singing of more sombre music, which always moved audiences,

struck a particular chord with the Dutch.

She could have entire orchestras in tears, even quite hardened people.

I remember Herbert von Karajan dabbing his eyes.

She certainly could make people cry and she certainly cried herself.

What that...

Where that comes from, I don't know.

I mean, her sister, I think, said that she had been very aware of a kind of...

of cancer as an agent of death from a very young age,

because she had seen a neighbour die slowly of it.

And I think, again according to Winifred, that she had been aware of something wrong with herself

from as early as kind of 43 or 44, which is an amazing thing, if true.

But certainly, I think there was certainly an awareness in Ferrier's voice

that life is not a bowl of cherries all the time, and it had a great kind of haunting melancholy in it,

which I think is hard to explain, but it certainly found a response in the people who listened to her.

It was also in Holland that Kathleen found herself

at the forefront of the post-war revival of the composer Mahler, banned during the Nazi occupation.

KATHLEEN SINGS MAHLER

I don't think it has been sufficiently recognised

that Kathleen Ferrier played a very vital role

in creating the new culture with regard to Mahler -

his reception in post-war Holland and elsewhere.

In retrospect, we see her as one of the founding artists

who really changed the way

people heard and thought about the music of Gustav Mahler.

One of the most striking contributions made to that

was by Kathleen Ferrier, in association, of course, with Bruno Walter

in that incredible performance of the work at Edinburgh in 1947.

"My greatest good fortune has been working with Dr Bruno Walter.

"To work and learn with him the works and songs of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler

"is to feel that one is gaining knowledge and inspiration from the composer himself.

"It is truly memorable to rehearse with him.

"It is very exciting, and sometimes almost unbearably moving."

KATHLEEN SINGS

People were hungry for music at that time.

We were just after the war,

and we were desperate for some...high culture,

and Edinburgh provided that,

and probably, um, that performance of the Mahler...

..was just about the apex of that festival.

You come nearest to hearing what she was like onstage

in the recital recorded with Bruno Walter at the Edinburgh Festival.

There is, as there often is in live performance, an extra something, in the happy and tragic songs.

And there, I feel, almost that Ferrier is again in front of me.

The extraordinary radiance of the voice - I still remember that.

The extraordinary, enveloping, overwhelming beauty of Ferrier's voice.

SINGING CONTINUES

I think it's very important to remember

that Bruno Walter did teach her how to sing German, and how to sing lieder.

And you could see the great rapport between them,

how Walter very much played to her singing.

It was obvious from him saying what a profound influence she had on him, apart from him on her.

BRUNO WALTER: Such rare beauty - beauty of expression,

beauty of voice, and purity, and beauty of personality.

It's one of my greatest impressions in my life.

And, since then, we became very great friends.

It was Bruno Walter who introduced America to Kathleen.

She arrived in New York for a series of concerts with him at Carnegie Hall in January 1948.

Life is good. Already a major star in Europe,

Kathleen stands on the brink of international success.

She is 35 years old. The pinnacle of her career is in sight.

"Here I am in New York and taking it in my stride!

"What a city! It is just a fairyland of good things and wonderful buildings.

"I had a day's shopping on Saturday and bought lovely pony-skin boots, some shoes and two woolly pants,

"a banana, some Lux soap, facecloth, blackcurrant and glycerine sweets, all without coupons!

"There seems to be huge excitement about this concert, and all three booked out, so I must do my stuff."

APPLAUSE

"It was disappointing. The audience was lousy. When I walked out, there was a handful of clapping.

"I was stunned! I thought I must've dropped my pants!

"I suppose it's good for one not to hit the headlines all the time.

"But I wanted to on this occasion."

From New York, Kathleen went on a month-long tour of America and Canada. It was tough.

In those days, the artist paid for themselves,

and for the first time in her life, she was in debt. She hated it.

The hotels that she stayed in - one of them was so bad

that she leaves a tidemark on the bath, as an act of revenge,

and another one is so good, it has such a wonderful toilet, that she won't use it.

"My big recital is tonight, in this hotel in the ballroom.

"It is snowing horizontally across my windows.

"The manager has just sent a bellboy up with a silver bowl

"with an apple, orange, pear, banana, grapes and a fig leaf.

"I'll never pay my bill."

When she went back in 1949 and then in 1950,

it was a different Kath.

SHE was the person who dictated the itinerary -

where she sang, how much she got, what she was responsible for, what she wasn't responsible for.

# I know where I'm going

# And I know who's going with me... #

"I'm just dashing to catch a train to Canada. Eee, if me mother could see me now!"

APPLAUSE KATHLEEN SINGING

"The hall was packed, and from the first, they purred.

"So different from Ohio, where half the audience were knitting.

"I said I was the highest-paid artist in England, wanted in every country on the continent,

"and if I was going to suffer and not enjoy my work,

"I wanted well-paying for it, not going home penniless!" TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

"He's the one who talks about not working me too hard!

"Bollocks! And I said I was in the bleedin' Rockies..."

"I'm fit as a flea, and haven't had a cigarette since I left the boat. In fact, I'm too good to live.

"Only, I hope no-one's listening, cos I like it just the same."

APPLAUSE

When she left in 1950, she was booked to return the next autumn.

It was an engagement she would be unable to keep.

-"Aren't I lucky?"

-Like Benjamin Britten and Bruno Walter,

Sir John Barbirolli became a great friend and mentor.

John was never in a very good mood when he had to conduct in Sheffield,

which he did once a week, and he had Kathleen as his soloist,

because the orchestra were raving about her,

and he always took notice of what the orchestra said.

And when she came, he was... I don't think he was disappointed with her,

but he couldn't get what he wanted from the orchestra,

and he threw his score at somebody, which is something he never did.

He almost never lost his temper, but he did then, and Kathleen was terrified,

and she brought this back at him all the years we knew her - the first meeting wasn't that happy.

He was very much a father figure to her in a different way from Walter, I think.

Walter, I imagine, trained her more. Probably worked on songs and taught her the German way of singing,

but I think that Barbirolli

was a more instinctive and more spontaneous father figure to her,

and I'm sure, obviously, they had an enormous rapport.

KATHLEEN SINGING

He could see that she was becoming the English oratorio contralto, and he didn't want that to happen.

-And so, he worked on things like the Chausson. ..Wasn't it?

-Mm-hm.

-Poeme de l'amour et de la Mer.

Extending her upper range. Things which she thought she couldn't do.

Testing her voice, so he took it much higher.

Bruno Walter was surprised about that, and he said to John,

"What've you done to her, cos she's gone up!"

KATHLEEN SINGS IN A HIGHER RANGE

She started staying with us in Manchester when she sang up there,

cos it was convenient and that sort of thing. We got to know her then.

And then she decided she'd love to come on holiday with us.

We had a house in Sussex, so she came there for about a week.

And so, gradually, it grew,

but, of course, with John especially it grew musically,

because he loved her musicality and the way she sang, the way she behaved, everything about her.

I think everybody loved her, really. We weren't alone in that. But we got to know her very well.

The marvellous thing about this Olympian fortitude

of this wonderful person,

that...as it grew year into year to the end

she became greater and greater, as if to say,

"This must fulfil itself before it left," and it did.

In January 1951, Kathleen's luck ran out.

On tour in Italy, she was told that her beloved father had died.

And on her return to England, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy.

"Things have been happening since I wrote to tell you about my Pop.

"I discovered a bump on mi busto and after much X-raying, had one bust removed.

"Now I've to have six weeks of ray treatment, which is sick-making, lazy-making and depressing.

"But I'm holding my own. Please don't broadcast what's wrong with me. I have wonderful camouflage

"and things get so magnified in the telly."

She said afterwards that she was afraid she wouldn't be brave enough to cope.

But she came through it well and as soon as she was out of danger,

she was sitting up in bed, chatting again, talking to her friends, having lots of visitors.

She had behind a curtain, bottles of gin and vermouth and the rest of it,

so that she could give her friends drinks when the time came.

And so she coped wonderfully with this situation.

"My stay in hospital was the pleasantest possible,

"and I have just about been ruined by kindness.

"My birthday was riotous - the hospital chef iced a gorgeous cake,

"and visits from Ben Britten and Peter Piers and many buddies,

"and all the sweet nurses coming to peep at Ben Britten.

"Flowers from Barbara Rolley and Malcolm Sergeant. Ruined, I am."

A few days after her birthday, Kathleen was told that secondary symptoms had been located

and that she would have to continue radiation therapy.

"I'm still going to hospital for rays each day. I have only been slightly queasy on a few occasions,

"when they lay most people totally out - making them violently sick, anaemic and suicidal.

"So, I'm feeling cocky and with the end in sight, I perk up each day.

"Two million volts is quite a lot of current going into one's innards, isn't it?"

Nevertheless, just ten weeks after her operation,

Kathleen flew to Amsterdam to take part in the Holland Festival.

KATHLEEN SINGS

SPEECH INAUDIBLE

She was a youngish woman to have breast cancer -

still before the menopause at the time when she got it.

And she'd obviously had it some time and concealed it,

as indeed a lot of women used to do in those days.

There was no way of telling if the tumour might have spread at the time of the mastectomy,

which of course sadly in her case, it had.

The following year, despite being seriously ill, Kathleen travelled to Vienna with her assistant,

to record Mahler's Das Lied Von Der Erde with Bruno Walter.

KATHLEEN SINGS IN GERMAN

By now, she'd cancelled numerous engagements at home and abroad

and was receiving almost continuous radiation treatment.

She was in considerable pain,

and it's impossible to listen to the recording they made in those extraordinary, heartbreaking days

without considering the personal circumstances of the artists -

Bruno Walter, the composer's friend, and Kathleen, who perhaps knew that it was her own farewell,

that she might only see the lovely earth grow green again once more.

Like Mahler, she rose to the challenge of a death sentence by reaching for perfection in her art.

On the last afternoon when they'd finished the final recording,

we were all sitting in a small room to hear the final tape.

When it was finished,

I will always feel that time completely stood still - just for a few seconds - absolute stillness.

Nobody said anything. Then Kath quietly walked over to Bruno Walter

and she said, "Was I all right, love?"

And the look on Bruno Walter's face was just so incredibly... beautiful, really.

He had no words either. He just didn't have words to say to her.

I do well remember the last time I heard her in Lied Von Der Erde

in November 1952 at the Festival Hall. One knew then that she was very ill.

I remember she was worried about a draught or something,

and she threw a shawl round her.

You then felt the tragedy and timelessness of Lied Von Der Erde

even more than in her past performances.

I remember that. It was Josef Kripps, the conductor?

And he turned to her and in a high German fashion, clicked his heels and bowed.

I felt that was a special salute.

After the thrill of being awarded the CBE in the new Queen's first honours list,

there remained one professional mountain to climb -

Orfeo at Covent Garden in February 1953, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli.

Since their concert performances of Orfeo, Sir John had wanted to stage the opera.

The previous summer, he and Kathleen had translated the Italian libretto.

I still have the copy,

because the translation was a little inept, so they altered that a lot,

and a good deal of laughter sometimes.

But I think she did enjoy Orpheus,

despite the fact that she was so ill at the time. Maybe she knew that it was the last time.

In the morning, when she got up, it was agony for her to move.

We had to get down a spiral staircase

and out across the snow and into a taxi.

It required a tremendous amount from her to do this.

But when we got to Covent Garden, the most fantastic thing used to happen,

because somehow or other, the pain seemed to go.

As soon as she got onstage, she was walking around normally.

I used to feel I was watching a miracle.

I remember coming in here and there was great excitement

because Kathleen was performing and she came for rehearsals.

I'd heard about her and so had you.

-And this very tall woman arrived in... Remember?

-She was very tall.

-And...

she had this most beautiful face and wonderful bone structure

and she had gorgeous eyes and very sallow skin. We were not aware that she was so ill.

This woman came in - she was so HEALTHY

and full of joys of life,

and so delighted to meet us.

As we were only three singers, when you hear a voice like that,

it gives you the impetus to sing better.

I don't think I sang so well as when I sang with her in her performance.

The first night, we were so enraptured with her voice - Adele and I were beside her,

and spontaneously, we started to applaud.

-We applauded.

-We were just overwhelmed with her voice.

On opening night, Kathleen sent a gift of cufflinks to Sir John with a note -

"For my beloved maestro, with my devoted love

"and oh, so many thanks for making an Orpheus dream come true."

To hear her singing Che Faro... It was...it was life.

This woman knowing that she was dying...

and in her eyes... She didn't cry, but there were tears.

She had beautiful eyes.

# What is life to me without thee?

# What is left If thou art dead...? #

At the second performance, something went wrong with her leg bones.

The bone in her leg actually fractured,

but very few in the audience knew this had happened.

She just stood in one position

and, by some sort of telepathy, she made everyone realise that she couldn't move -

that they'd have to come to her - and they instinctively did.

She said to me onstage, "I can't bear the pain." I put my hand out. I said, "You lean on it."

We walked off to the side of the stage. They called an ambulance, but she wanted to go back onstage.

I said, "All right." So we went back on and we did the finale.

She'd had secondary breast cancer

and the cells had gone into her bones - that happens even nowadays.

The cells weaken the bone,

and particularly if the bone is a weight-bearing bone like the hip bone,

if it gets very weak, it can crack and fracture. That's what happened.

It must have been excruciatingly painful.

To have continued and managed to finish and got off the stage...

That's real grit, that is.

"I couldn't walk the next day and had to be carried down our stairs at great risk to my life,

"by two perspiring, hefty ambulance men.

"And here I am, furious at letting Covent Garden down,

"furious at missing my investiture, but counting my blessings that I am here in wonderful Hams.

"Much love to all my buddies, Kath."

In June, Kathleen was awarded one of the highest musical honours -

the Royal Philharmonic Society's gold medal.

A month later, she underwent a further operation on which she pinned all her hopes.

On the 8th of October, 1953, Kathleen Ferrier died peacefully in her sleep.

KATHLEEN SINGS 'CHE FARO'

In 1953, when I first came to London as a student,

I remember coming out of the Underground at Oxford Circus,

and being confronted by the newspaper adverts that this famous singer had died.

I knew exactly who it was.

I felt very sad because I knew I wasn't going to have the opportunity ever to get to know her.

It was a cutoff period. Something was very definitely over,

and I think all my generation felt that.

Subtitles by BBC Broadcast 2003

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