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Good afternoon this is Martin Bush welcoming you to another live broadcast from the New York City Center brought to you by W N Y C N W N Y C F.M. at two thirty the New York City Opera company will offer its new production of released. By Igor Stravinsky in a new English translation and also in English the American radio premier of Carla or the Mon between works you will hear Eric Leinsdorf in a backstage interview with the renowned choreographer Agnes Jamil In fact we're speaking to you from backstage right now where in just a few moments we'll hear Mr lines to often a backstage trat with two of the members of the cast of the story of a soldier this by the way will be the final broadcast your city station will make of the New York City Opera presentations and we are genuinely sorry to bring this era series to a close the New York City Opera Company However we emphasize will continue to bring opera to New Yorkers and popular prices from now until the end of the season which is Saturday evening November third we urge you as always to support them if you care to write in your reactions to these broadcasts of the Opera we'd be glad to have them write a postcard to W N Y C New York seven that W. N.Y.C. New York seven at this time your city station would like to thank the city center board of directors Newbold Morris chairman as well as the labor unions New York local one of the international alliance of the article stagehands employees local eight zero two of the American Federation of Musicians and the American gold of musical artists without whose co-operation these broadcasts could not have been made now we turn this microphone over to the director of the New York City Opera Company Eric line store. In our efforts to bring to our public the leading artists home they are going to hear up on these broadcasts it is my great pleasure this afternoon to bring to you the. Gentleman whom I have the greatest of ease before the microphone because they are ex DOS they are not merely used to singing over the microphone they're used to speaking over microphone speed Radio B T V or being to speaking without microphones on stage. Is to have you sort out this sort of state by striving to get which is the first part of the bill is a curious record which cannot be quite the fun of the sudden is not an opera and recently one of our uncomplimentary critics said it was very interesting that the finest performance of the season was one which no sing of. Gentlemen this is at Oscar just one one opinion and here as a director of this opera company I do not agree with this at all but I will say that the other night I have. Taken home with me the most profound of mutation for your performances now I just go one by one gentleman and let us start with Mr have had a little give the order of the devil in such a state Mr had seen I don't. To get like rattle off. Who is who was would you tell our audience a little bit of what you have done on stage you know all right I don't want to go back to far. I don't I don't want to ask too many questions not to be too much ignorant Yeah. I'm not supposed to be that what you're supposed to be with the opera were just as I'm supposed to be with the theatre there seems to be an amalgamation at the moment so I'm very happy to help you out a mission and I know what our privilege and I would get as long as I don't have to sing that's all I'm. Going to. Have you done recently where I have done a good deal of television recently which is sometimes very interesting as you know and sometimes not so interesting and I came back straight back from Hollywood from doing a television climax show before I started this and that two opposite poles because I played a scientist in a very tense drama about the fog and there was no dancing and I was no choreographic pattern to be adhered to and so forth so that this was a complete switch for me and usually that I think I've been more than a fight with with some of the films I made about seven or eight years ago and lately in the theatre where I've been working a good deal I've worked with a living and so you have you have the Academy Award Not personally but a film that I was in received two Academy Awards with. May say so and then I think you also had. Ones one of them best performances which season that was last season and both fight season before last season before last play I didn't which I played a both fighter and the film as Dorian Gray. Yes yes I played Prince Paul one of them with us you play the devil Yes I said I've been very fortunate New York because most actors suffer from being typecast that seems to be the curse of the American theater and screen and I have no problem this is just for fun I was to be asked to do the same thing over. Oh but he's dreaming now. Mr James Mitchell who is also with us this afternoon. Is an actor. I must say in this or just you will of course not be able to see over the radio his marvelous dancing by the way also Mr Hatfill has got a graphic novel says yes but I notice that there is a great wealth of of a very very talented Mr Mitchell described to us your transition from dancing to dancing and acting I think it's a very fascinating story this reluctance of being specialized to have great sympathy for it well I began you know when I was very young in college and your original plot of how I was to be an actor and I got sidetracked along the way and dancing and found that I could make a living that way you see but I never kind of gave up the acting desire and since I've been working in New York most of my work has been as a dancer in Broadway shows but I've always had the urge to get back and so I've slowly. Started doing acting roles the only one who has this now I think there are several of your colleagues that I would know there are lots of lots of dancers who you know would like to do acting roles and lot of several of them have been very successful isn't Robert Helpmann Oh yes he's one of the Yes it's a fine actor he's least Aza done so much but I certainly have such right and you start as an actor when to do dancing you know you're back on the boat that's right and that's so yes so that ought to be a rather satisfactory experience yes sign I enjoy it especially when the two can be combined you know in this in this thing here the So just what would you call it I mean how would you categorize this somebody says do not what is this or just what is it but you said what I think the Stravinsky best defined He says it is a piece to me. Mind danced acted and read. And that I think just about does it of course that doesn't give you any clue to the content I don't the form of the news media need any definition but you know I sometimes feel that if someone but are you listening to us is now in the kind of fellows are these two of them are leading actors in this piece and one is a director of the theater none of them know no not understand nothing and I think it's sort of fascinating I think that's what's so interesting about it it's such an experiment in form Yeah and I understand that Stravinsky was very impoverished at the time that he fled from Russia when this mists first written if I'm correct in one thousand nine hundred and Switzerland and had very few means with which to produce anything so there are only four people in it but you know one of the one of the interesting things about Stravinsky is career here is. That he has not had any income from his most popular work such as proof of the Firebird because of course they were all still published by national firms and as far as I had never been a party to the Geneva copyright I don't doubt is involved as a yes on the Internet as copyright I have mentioned he was never there aren't any given only recently by rewriting some of these old scores making some enough changes to justify a new copy by the range has he been able to match an e-mail to mass to make money from that is not expanding so let us let us try to do to get to get a little closer to our audience the feeling of this piece which you gentlemen have because you know particularly anxious well in an operating months here I think I don't see what goes on but they get to continue score Yes I hear they will hear a lot of reading and then a great deal of stamping become reality. And heavy breathing on my part so maybe you can describe a little bit about what goes on in you now that you have your first M M stage here with another it's actually it's a play I think with music on music with a sleigh but now I think this is a gentleman in the audience now they have come. To a point we might get a very furious telegram from Stravinsky how we do because we're in the good that is healthy respect Oh yes I see it now and so if it is well enough to listen to this but with some short wave set up he would probably well enough to say because if you use telekinesis which we have well Michel I'm still of you are just as wrong as you could be to call this a play Yeah we have said this is the centrally I think as long as we're actors we can call it a play and you're not really need something to do it has a definite plot it has a definite story or what you might call it a concert or I could be called music with a play but with an odd turn out and something is missed the mark most of. The timbre orchestra. So just Taylor and the gentleman with the audience which is missed the moment during the show can I go back a little before that please the curtain is up in the theater which I think is a very nice device when the audience comes in to take their seats they are already aware of this interesting vacuum of the stage that is not the play whatever they come to see that is really that there's something not a play not a music and no one is there to this vacuum comes. With his genius and Mr Plummer with his on the left hand side of the stage because he's the narrative and sits at a desk and lights a candle shirtsleeve and shirtsleeves very relaxed in a rehearsal atmosphere and Mr Merrill comes with his eight musicians happily and is onstage your dress suit is not the rest of us no but that's something of a tradition which you appreciate as a musician with his ears a man who his manner on the stage in this particular thing is Relax relax he way that's a turn out right or it doesn't have the formality of I can see that all around such Several of our houses reduced to some household members relaxed it has been I think it's performance matters more relaxed so there's a sense of and very relaxed there's been very relaxed and I have to speak once with ARC with the orchestra you know and it's my moment of sheer terror because I first of all I have no breath left. My dad says which I love doing and I'm suddenly have to speak absolutely to the beach and I will as if I want you to set all I have now this is very much gentlemen the possibility and it happens very rarely in opera of course because the singers of that are reluctant to go through that experience but after a dance of even duration to be able to have enough control of one's breath Mr Mitchell and Mr Hadfield There is a special problem with there isn't there there's no way to speak properly after you've danced strenuously it's impossible just impossible heard really not a trained ounce or runs into trouble I have a doubt any doubt if that's what it after a terrible problem section of movement it's impossible to speak you can barely stand up I have this light crisp phrases and as Jimmy knows I think it amuses him very much onstage I'm desperately trying to get my breath because it comes right after a violent dance which I'm not accustomed to affect the film the whole thing is tremendous impact and I'm I mention this because I think that people have heard this today over there. They might really feel that they haven't. Quite got it I'm just you know you have to see this yes when I really say I regret the day the audience listening audience won't be able to see. Me so close work. With you for them should be gently That's right yes oh yeah thirty first right yeah this is a gentle Wednesday you know but you're That's right and I think it's so puzzling for them to I know that the story is going to be told it's an abscess I understand just why don't write is going to be given but so much of it is visual because of the directorial and choreographed and we're here I would like to interject one thing you know how it is and how difficult it can be the last time I had the pleasure. To come to the music of. Go out it was done with only one actor narrate think everything everybody else was merely dancing and poor. Rate was getting so old I had to have the feeling C.S. Oh yeah how interesting and Johnny's rule danced the Princess Kate yes he was the baddest Yes How interesting Now this was a totally different version Yeah I do I do think that I was here. Happens to bring out more of the of the on the overtones of the perfect me as I didn't see that performance I was aware of the. Difficult but also from the present project I did not the people. I appeared in a sort of a. Turtleneck. Yes that the project to go off and. Get up of the musicians that have to be passed around a bottle of whiskey and I think that's very dangerous I think that to say that some of them. They could reduce weeks during the performance but the performance of a bunch of stuff that's just the play well guess that's what I need so I can stay quiet so we ever got a real problem for you I know you might have all fired by now that estimate chill out forces me to drink in the card playing scene which you know in which he outwits the devil perhaps that's a suggestion Mr Mitchell How does this go down with your present Think it with any hope of a job working it well I'm a conflict because it conflicts when we have performances here like this afternoon the young man who was playing the role of Jerry Jerry Orbach Yes it will take over and he will also on the thirty first of this is been running a long time while they know their production has been running a year in this particular version of it and I think it's going to run amuck a year are you going to be in a dog you have other plans towards that but I'll be with it for three or four months just to happen but the next plans I mean we have not more than a few performances to offer to you gentlemen so I hope that something else will come up soon while I'm supposed pleasure I it's a great pleasure for me I had only do this three times as a matter of fact because it's been so much work to. Do it once but as a sign up now I think the gas revive it practically at the. Fuel or that would be when he's noticed yes it's a very rich work and I think that it will grow with us the more we do it I think the more we might just have a plumber Yes I think you name it and I say I'm yes and my salad says name we have to mention I was asked to write this of course this is been a great a great treat for this for this house to have people from the legitimate stage and a director such as most of us is there was that experience into the vision and on yes. And I think it gives to the New York City Opera I hope it can have an identity which I was trying to establish you see and I don't believe that this city of New York needs to opera houses competing for the or just the same thing you know planned or just was not tonight after I would probably love these two new works I mean yes but it's still a new work although it is a must as I first saw production in New York I understand at the Stravinsky the physical compliment costume and everything wasn't one of the Phoenix moth other wrestle mosque etched around Iraq no it was it was just more of the dancing side lar dancing never had yes yes it was not acted dance it was danced and rated I said Yeah but you know that's kind of the love of a complete penetration Also than that it gets up and begins to somebody to take sides so yes we as in the comic game yes who influences sort of how to treat them yes this is our thing I've never seen yes was and I think as many times as this work is being done as many of the petitions across the ridges of the work yeah as well as it's a wonderful work because what it meant to say is I'm so very grateful that you gentlemen have joined the CIA in this venture which some people probably consider memory quencher and which is designed to exactly to show to New York that there are many forms of the musical theater yet and that that particularly happy the one from of the musical theater be they get. Of some excellent actors an excellent dances and Mr Hatfield you have not told us yet but your plans well I'm going to do it another television I'm going back to Hollywood to do another climax Why do you have to go I just thought it was well they do them there they seem to do so much television out there and I go and do it and then I come right back here again and then I've been discussing since we opened another play which I'm not free to say at the moment because our life is too tenuous as one may never work again I'm a very nice a very nice we never know if they are discovered to have some satellite moment one can have a show or out of actors but it's a possibility and my main interest I must say has always been that's fair and I don't make any pretense about it I'm very happy to make movies I want if they want me and if I can do one but I love the theater and this has been another facet of it which I found extremely interesting look at the end analysis of the response of these people down to something which is wonderful this is a wonderful audience interest and I just marvelous They seem to really respond you know whatever the end of. The evening when you're. The first so just feel yes yes it was the first part I think I saw Mr Mitchell stand with me in the back you know for the second part of the which was the moon yes now the end of the moon there was a public response but it was a mixed public response yes I understand either with or frankness to the audience who believe in. Giving their lives never booze in the dog yes I have now lost what these books were about that they have done something about yes I have someone here if you. Do not feel like doing. You are putting this is on but he was there not because we have made crank in the mission we have made quite the cut in that part of the show which was generally considered to be a let down in the too long to last Yes And I think it's very wise if you like doing this often we don't think anything at all because we have to change the conditions but I think it's a wonderful little place to be in an opera house where you can express yourself of France and Italy where they get up and they throw things and they have to say oh my god. Doesn't happen to me and that's why we help it doesn't mean I think it's so expressive and missed but in the process there anything but indifference to and definitely ask me if this is all the tomatoes I might get better than if they just sit. On their hands walk out yes no yes there's nothing worse in the theater than the indifference of the pub Yes because now there's this alright and the process better but but the difference is that one thing life is the great thing and I certainly were lively and I stand Tuesday evening and there approbation and as a program like that's quite an exciting night they are thanks to all of our principal participants in the sorceress tale Mr James Mitchell who dances and acts and recites the part of the soldier in this that have had three who dances and acts and resides the truck driver Thank you Jeff thank you thank you now return your to your advice in the times it is my pleasure to bring to our audiences. As our guest Miss Agnes them a little I think needs hardly any introduction because by now she has become though a young woman a legendary figure in the field of dance of choreography but before our broadcast she told me that her first great ballet but all they know has never been off the board since not in forty two and of course I think that most of you know either directly or indirectly that she was responsible for the incomparable choreography of Oklahoma Welcome to the microphone Miss Agnes the mail in THINK you for being here with us this afternoon. Mr Miller I am particularly happy to have you here this afternoon when our performance at the New York City Opera is concerned with the works both of which are very important choreographic overtones sort of Mr Vincent and the moon but on the before getting into I should like you to tell us something more. About that one in the for a wonderful piece you wrote for The Atlantic Monthly and when I had your acceptance to come to the program I was particularly proud because I wanted to tell you here before the world how much I admire the place and how much I subscribe to it but when you tell us something about it Well I'm very glad you do because I believe in it with all my it is a piece about patronage and it was first a speech that I made in the interests of balance set up but really in the interests of any lyric that off that any fair that is not founded and support in your life for commercial reasons I I have worked in the commercial a long time and I love it and I have derived good fortune from it but I do feel there is a crying need in every country for a set up that is that is supported and formed for enduring experimental special works that cannot be expected to pay for themselves either because they need so much rehearsing all such elaborate preparations are because they are a little strange to the public and will take maybe a little see to become popular I think we must remember that some of the works we cherish the most and which are our bonafide imap service excesses today like travel. Were not successful of that first performances and had they been put on Broadway under the conditions we now operate on Broadway that would never happen again but isn't it true that the finishing of success. Or what constitutes a success changes from generation to generation after all it's a certain time and if we go back a hundred fifty or two hundred years it was perfectly satisfactory if the work of an artist pleased the prince who had commissioned little maybe two to three dozen of his friends and to date if you cannot around the. Usually show for you're not from Broadway or for your Broadway it is considered is really up because it hasn't paid its investment good and that indicates a change of the very definition of success Well I don't know that it would actually because in the old days there was no such thing as a really popular theater when I said the old I mean the four hundred fifty two hundred years ago but the feudal Arab of which was pretty rare has the eighteenth century well but those theaters were privately supported by royalty and I don't think that was there was of course a pop in the theatre in England not quite a pop in the theater in France the popular there in Italy I think was the committed a lot and they didn't have very much in the way of production but Mr Miller Don't you make the point in your article. Which I by the way I would highly recommend to everyone who was concerned. With interested in the question of deficits and why certain institutions cannot show a. Natural Balance or even out didn't you mention the even their own money. Later the problem with sense is a circus is that also deficit over the sense that no they were the emperors way of keeping the public amused and quiet so they would support other excesses and they were given partially by the Emperor I think there was a small. Payment necessary to get but it couldn't possibly support the spectacles he gave them animals from the heart of Africa and he had to round up a great many supporting characters namely the Christians this took a good deal of doing that had to be captured imprisoned fed for a while but I missed the milk was the article that was your article the speech exactly over the any things taken out from the speech that I never speak from the out so I was speaking just to see. The cause of everything missed anything when you read the article I don't think so no. I just simply edited it but there was just the one thing I began with this definition of a paper which Dr Johnson had written to laud Chesterfield and I believe this is it is not a patron my lord someone who watches with unconcern a man struggling for life in the water and when he has reached Shaw encumbers him with help and I felt that was a very apt definition of the usual patron we think of patrons today as those people who collect portraits and pictures fine paintings fine furniture and five sculpture Actually there are investors and they're hanging on their wall what amounts to gold edged gilt edged curators the man who supports an unknown artist and puts money behind his life's work not knowing that he will become a valuable asset is the true patriot. Of course you don't have to convince is all right all that oh yes there was something I asked out of the article I could tell you this I went once to get money for a ballet company that I believed in and I wanted to help support some works that I believed in and I went to the people in the think first and I went to one very famous man and I blushed and stab and he said don't you don't have to say one more word Here's a thousand dollars that was asking Hammerstein and I said give me a drink because I'm shaking but then I went to somebody else and I said. Could I have some money for this project and he said I don't like dancing and I said well that's all right a lot of people don't and it's a habit I find myself falling into but you do believe in the progressive there and he said I said no. And I said Well then good bye I'm sorry there's nothing I want to say Now this was a man very high up in the theater and he said to me our show you what I believe in and he swept in our top a great big pictures an enormous picture stood against the wall it was very large it was genuine oil painting it was a matter of fact around Brad and I said I can't argue with that but you see he was investing in really just the most the most lucrative. Sure fire thing which couldn't go wrong no this is like buying Stella Intel or General Motors you know. There's a Bally if compared to. About a. Little Just. Because less personal because on top of the body the sort of the answers the call the belly the orchestra the opera. Does not need such a large crowd about it all so many sort of dances but we do need them but we also need a sort of sing us singing about us and of course I think that the cynic demands of opera are more quantitative read at least than ballet. Now ballet it seems to be a deficit producing organisation how much more deficits must the opera have and will you tell us why you think ballet must be supported and it's why you cannot be self-supporting You see I've found that so many people and people of good will not like you or any one patron there don't really understand because it is never sufficiently clearly explained why the deficits will always be with us well I think it's true with ballet opera and symphony orchestras it is because the training is the highest in the wild and the longest lasting site and because they mount a rising is much greater than any other form of yeah and also because we play in repertory. Isn't one of the reasons also that we cannot possibly charge the prices which we would have to charge if that were to pay for itself because we cannot put that kind of penalty on the people who want to see and hear these offerings now when you produce something with a great deal of preparation in the field of zero zero zero commerce or industry you charge a very high price it means that your preparation of high quality is passed on to the person who wants it but therefore we are we have certain very high quality articles reserved for the very rich but I think the self evident that great art cannot be reserved only for the very rich don't you think this is something going I think that vital and I think we've come to realize this in the way of education for instance colleges now are open to the poor sound too and that they are subsidized either by the state or individuals and music to a certain extent we know that we cannot support a symphony orchestra playing first class music by just the ticket for seats we cannot charge appropriate sums of money to the public that means we have to up the charge and therefore somebody has to make up the difference because nobody will claim that only the very wealthy should be permitted to attend symphony and ballet and of them do exactly that is an improbable I think that's the I think is that is the involved right but I think the public should become used to the idea of thinking then everything to the finest dramatic that as a public benefit part of their education a web public library public art gallery and I think it should not be left just to the charity of individuals I feel if the state thinks this is necessary I think can be made to think that this is necessary for the good of our people it will help to build. Your heart you are made of this country yet upon a New York Harbor to be exact now do you know do you. Think that the. Basically this country has any sympathy for the for the opposition that needs charity. Well historically we have a prejudice against us and that is a bad think that one of our psychological hazards comes again do you see any possibility that people might take the same attitude to shows in the lives of those in the theatre which they take to shows on the air that means do you think that the sponsorship for the sake of advertising is the way to find the subsidy which is not charity I think it will come but it will come through and like man I wasn't commissioned. Mylan I just as is it wasn't that a T.V. commercial Yes it was but then again the horror of the war the T.V. opera. Is great cultural service which the Broadcasting Corporation is giving. To the country I think that this is not a commercial venture I think this is a cultural venture of the such it constitutes and light and light in the street but I can understand why one of the very great corporations with money that they wish to put to advertising cannot put into an advertising scheme that will make me the model famous Well I think the people if if you can find the handle of. The lever to convince them I think when I'm swimming I was the motions out of England for instance which was bound flat and which had no money not even buffering spread out of the wall came the side as well came a side as well as ballet company where there remarkable productions came the Young Vic and so many. Do you attribute this to men this rise in recent years of the popularity of Bali. Well I think it's in the air somewhat and I think those things come in cycles the were many creative people working all at once in this country we had Martha Graham and Doris Humphreys for instance and in England there was Frederick action and Antony Judah and the extraordinary genius Damon and about who organized the idea over there but the response there have always been great valleys when you're known for I don't know I think I'm not the have not always been you don't think there's been a great no doubt about it some of the European savages an old traditions yes but there have been periods of greatness and the greatest the great period comes with great creative people when those people work and the permitted to work freely and happily then the public responds always. Well I certainly am most grateful for the very stimulating and lightning. Talk you give us Mr Millet thank you very much for being with us and I hope that you enjoy this afternoon this afternoon's performances which are really right in the field of the choreographer as you know both these two are in the moment thank you now return you to W.V. and Y.C. and it's announced.