Opera critic David Gilliard retires from Daily Mail and reflects on 40 thrilling years

By David Gillard

Last updated at 1:04 AM on 29th July 2011

Pavarotti was in playful mood. The great tenor may have been in the middle of recording La Traviata — with Dame Joan Sutherland as his none-too-consumptive Violetta — but he still had an eye for a pretty face.

Conductor Richard Bonynge and the National Philharmonic were immersed in the full swell of Verdi’s score, but the sight of an attractive blonde about to exit through a side door was too much for the notoriously hot-blooded Italian.

‘Stop that girl!’ he bellowed, reducing Dame Joan and the orchestra to giggles while Bonynge rapped his baton on the music stand and called for order.

Oversize talent: David Gilliard with Pavarotti during the Seventies

But the lady in question (Daily Mail photographer Nikki English, who had just taken Pavarotti’s picture for the feature I was to write) had left the building and, with a wink and a rueful grimace, Pavarotti returned to the business in hand.

That was back in 1979 and earlier that afternoon I had interviewed  Pavarotti while he caressed Dame Joan’s stomach.

‘Big P always does this before a recording,’ she explained sweetly. ‘By holding my diaphragm and feeling my muscles, he says he learns how to breathe properly.’

Nice work, if you can get it, I thought.

You can still hear their magnificent breath control on that celebrated Decca recording.

And I count myself fortunate to have been at that historic session — and lucky, indeed, to have been part of so many great operatic moments as the Mail’s opera critic for the past 40 years (and its ballet critic for 18).

I joined the new, compact Mail at its birth in May 1971 — a perfect time for a young man who was passionate about music-theatre.

Sir Peter Hall was then co-director of the Royal Opera (though soon to leave to lead the National Theatre), and I shared his view that, in opera, music and drama should be equal partners. I still do.

Pavarotti liked to caress Dame Joan Sutherland's stomach, which he said helped him improve his breathing

The days of the fat lady singing were drawing to a close (and the fat gentleman, too, though Pavarotti always bucked the trend) and the death-knell was sounded for the stand-and-deliver school of performance.

Hall — along with Jonathan Miller, Trevor Nunn, Richard Eyre and many more — enabled and encouraged a new generation of true singing actors.

Over the years, it has been my privilege to hear some of the greatest performers of our time — the Three Tenors, of course, and Sutherland.

But it is the amazing star-is-born nights that made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle.

I was in the audience when an unknown Kiri te Kanawa gave unmistakable notice of greatness as a radiant Countess in The Marriage Of Figaro; when the young Bryn Terfel sang his first Figaro; and when Angela Gheorghiu became an overnight  sensation with her heartrending Violetta in La Traviata.

The operatic disasters? Plenty of false moustaches dropping off and scenery-crashing mishaps, of course, but who could forget the bravery of feisty American soprano Joyce Di Donato in The Barber Of Seville two years ago? 

Having slipped and apparently twisted her ankle, she continued the performance on crutches, later to discover that she’d broken her leg. She sang the rest of the run in a wheelchair.

Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev was notoriously temperamental

Interviewing the stars has usually been a pleasure, too, because despite their diva-ish reputations they are often very down-to-earth people.

Placido Domingo, for instance, was more excited about telling me of a goal he had scored for Herbert von Karajan’s football team in Salzburg than about singing with the great German maestro.

And the much-loved Welsh bass-baritone Sir Geraint Evans provided me with some fascinating insights into how he created his inimitable portrayals.

The waddle of his corpulently padded Falstaff was, he said, based on watching one of his sons toddling about in a nappy.

I did not always have such amiable relations with the notoriously temperamental Rudolf Nureyev.

I had been commissioned to write the biography of ballerina Dame Beryl Grey, then artistic director of London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet), and as a result was given unprecedented access to the company, including watching Nureyev create his opulent new production of The Sleeping Beauty.

When I attempted to interview the fiery Russian in his dressing room after one turbulent afternoon rehearsal session, he flung his jockstrap at me shouting: ‘Big interview finished!’

When we next met, a smile of recognition flashed across those chiselled Tartar features. ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘You are the dresser for  Festival Ballet!’ It was as much of an apology as I was likely to get.

But flying undergarments apart, I count myself lucky to have known such iconic stars. And also to bid  farewell at a time when opera is in such good health. 

David Gilliard was there when an unknown Kiri te Kanawa gave a radiant performance of the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro

Our national and regional companies are producing fine works and a new generation of extremely talented  British singers (and conductors) are establishing international reputations. Top theatre directors — from Sir Nicholas Hytner to Rupert Goold — are bringing fresh ideas to the  operatic stage.

Of course, there is still the occasional ‘producer’s opera’: I’m thinking  in particular of a cocaine- snorting Don Giovanni, and the conspirators-on-the-loo in A  Masked Ball.

But the big change now is that the punters are no longer afraid to give opera a try. The popularising power of the Three Tenors and the so-called ‘crossover’ singers, Classic FM, the accessibility of live cinema and Big Screen relays have all helped opera lose its elitist image.

So as I — Sinatra-like — face the final curtain, I’m optimistic about opera’s future, and proud to have played a small part in encouraging non-aficionados to enjoy it.

And whatever my own future brings, the past 40 years have certainly been worth making a song and dance about.

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