BBC Margot Fonteyn Article - "lost" Desert Island Discs recordings

[lollylamb1]

Started reading https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63215698 and noticed the large error under her second image which reads ‘Margot Fonteyn says Giselle in Swan Lake is the most difficult to dance’

 

Have emailed BBC about this as I’m not sure what it was meant to read! Wonder if there are any other errors, I’m no Fonteyn expert?

[Pulcinella]

This may be a major error, agreed, but what hasn't been mentioned here is that this refers to 70 lost recordings from Desert Island Dscs which have been found in someone's attic. Not only is one of them Margot Fonteyn but also Anthony Dowell and Alicia Markova.

[Fonty]

I was going to post something about that, you beat me to it.  If Fonteyn said that, then I really would be astounded.  Surely the BBC should check their facts before putting that in a headline.  

 

Edited to add that Fonteyn did say that she thought Swan Lake was the most difficult ballet to dance, that much is true.

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Fonty

[bangorballetboy]

You can check for yourselves as to what was said as the recordings are all on the BBC Sounds app.  There was a clip from MF on the wireless news this morning, talking about the RB's escape from The Netherlands after the German invasion.

[Ian Macmillan]

That's certainly what I heard an hour or so ago.  And there's quite good coverage of Fonteyn (+ 2 pics) on this BBC piece:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63215698

 

 

[Lizbie1]

1 hour ago, lollylamb1 said:

Started reading https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63215698 and noticed the large error under her second image which reads ‘Margot Fonteyn says Giselle in Swan Lake is the most difficult to dance’

 

Have emailed BBC about this as I’m not sure what it was meant to read! Wonder if there are any other errors, I’m no Fonteyn expert?

 

It's a pretty strange article in my opinion - seems mostly focussed on things being different now to 60 years ago, as if that were a surprise.

[Fonty]

I should have qualified my previous post by saying that Fonteyn did say that she thought SL was the most difficult to dance, but whether or not she said it on DID I couldn't remember as I haven't listened to it.  

[bridiem]

3 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

It's a pretty strange article in my opinion - seems mostly focussed on things being different now to 60 years ago, as if that were a surprise.

 

Yes; and with a constant implied criticism of how things were in the past compared to the sunlit uplands of today. So tedious.

[Lizbie1]

8 minutes ago, bridiem said:

 

Yes; and with a constant implied criticism of how things were in the past compared to the sunlit uplands of today. So tedious.

 

And the implication that Fonteyn would now be probed about the nature of her personal relationship with Nureyev, as if these things aren't glossed over even now on DID. Or - more importantly - as if one of the great artists of her time should be defined by this.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Lizbie1
missing word

[Sim]

And why does she have to point out that the guests are “predominantly white male”?  Oh yes, this is the BBC. 

[Pas de Quatre]

When I click on the link It now shows a different photo, Ondine I think. Interesting that she asked for a diver's mask as she was known for being an excellent swimmer.

[lollylamb1]

9 minutes ago, Pas de Quatre said:

When I click on the link It now shows a different photo, Ondine I think. Interesting that she asked for a diver's mask as she was known for being an excellent swimmer.

Yes the article seems to have been updated and the text under the image has changed!

[Lizbie1]

5 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

It's a pretty strange article in my opinion - seems mostly focussed on things being different now to 60 years ago, as if that were a surprise.

 

Sorry to quote myself, but I keep thinking about this, and it's clarified something I've been wondering about for a while: that increasingly many seem unable to see things other than through today's lens. (It's not a new thing, but it is becoming a bigger tendency IMO.)

 

If I'm reading, say, Jane Eyre, I'm not constantly thinking to myself, "Gosh, women didn't have many options back then!": I already know this and take it as read, and am instead transported back to those times and absorbed in the story. I don't know why this is apparently becoming more difficult for well educated people to do.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Lizbie1

[Sim]

56 minutes ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

Sorry to quote myself, but I keep thinking about this, and it's clarified something I've been wondering about for a while: that increasingly many seem unable to see things other than through today's lens. (It's not a new thing, but it is becoming a bigger tendency IMO.)

 

If I'm reading, say, Jane Eyre, I'm not constantly thinking to myself, "Gosh, women didn't have many options back then!": I already know this and take it as read, and am instead transported back to those times and absorbed in the story. I don't know why this is apparently becoming more difficult for well educated people to do.

Which is why they are 'decolonising' the curricula at schools and universities...the poor diddums are unable to read history or literature because some of it might reflect unpleasant events or attitudes.  Are we supposed to pretend these events and attitudes never happened?  Do they think that by brushing everything away that this will mean they never did?  Isn't it better for people to be able to read about these things and then discuss them, and make their own minds up?  Maybe if people today read more broadly they would be aware of one of the most famous opening lines in English literature:  "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."  Yes they do, and no amount of denial or pretending otherwise will change that.    

[Scheherezade]

Doesn’t it all stem from the prevailing idea that we must all be protected from anything that anyone may find even the slightest bit unpalatable?
 

Which totally fails to address the fact that many of us find this climate of oppressive overprotectiveness unpalatable.

 

Not to mention how unrealistic and dangerous overprotectiveness is at a time when we are all being exposed to more violence, intolerance and inhumanity than most of us have experienced at any time in living memory. 

[Fonty]

@Sim I find myself using that quote from The Go-Between more and more these days.  It is not just the distant past they are busy criticising, it is my past too.  I was sharply rebuked the other day for using the word "actress" and told this was demeaning to women as it implied they were "less valued" than men.  I fail to see how calling a woman an actress, rather than a female actor, is demeaning, and think it is yet another example of the world going mad.  

Edited October 13, 2022 by Fonty

[Scheherezade]

I couldn’t agree more. It is just as easy to argue that it implies greater value. Total nonsense either way but when women have fought so hard for recognition in their own right, isn’t it counter-productive and, indeed, demeaning to negate that recognition. 

[Pas de Quatre]

It makes me sad that such people who wish to judge the past through today's values seem to ignore the horrors that exist now. Child and slave labour to mine the rare earths needed to make mobile phones, sweat shops to produce fast fashion. Exploitation of vulnerable people in the "recreational" drug industry. We can't change the past but we should learn from it.

[DVDfan]

Many of the things we now deplore were done by people who sincerely believed they were doing right. For example, in the mid 20th century unmarried mothers were forced to give up their babies for adoption because it was thought that this was far and away the best option for both mother and baby. In the Middle Ages heretics were burned at the stake to save their souls (and everyone else from contamination). Jews were forced to convert to Christianity for the same reason.  And so on...

So, what are we doing wrong in the name of right now?  

[Ian Macmillan]

Someone will be sure to tell us, or those still around, in 2072! 

[Pas de Quatre]

There is actually a term for this now "Saviour syndrome".

[Lizbie1]

8 hours ago, DVDfan said:

Many of the things we now deplore were done by people who sincerely believed they were doing right. For example, in the mid 20th century unmarried mothers were forced to give up their babies for adoption because it was thought that this was far and away the best option for both mother and baby. In the Middle Ages heretics were burned at the stake to save their souls (and everyone else from contamination). Jews were forced to convert to Christianity for the same reason.  And so on...

So, what are we doing wrong in the name of right now?  

 

Eugenics was all the rage a hundred years ago - supported by JM Keynes and GB Shaw among others.

 

(This is actually an example of where the Roman Catholic church got it right - they, with Chesterton providing a lot of the ammunition, led the opposition IIRC.)

[DVDfan]

Lizbie, just for the record, I wasn't intending to criticise the Roman Catholic church as such, they've been right as often as they've been wrong, (like most of us).  I simply reached for historic European examples, which I thought were non-controversial in the modern world, to make my point.

 

[Lizbie1]

1 hour ago, DVDfan said:

Lizbie, just for the record, I wasn't intending to criticise the Roman Catholic church as such, they've been right as often as they've been wrong, (like most of us).  I simply reached for historic European examples, which I thought were non-controversial in the modern world, to make my point.

 

 

I didn't think you were  - and agree with all your examples. And 

for the record on my part, I'm not a Catholic myself.

 

To your original point, I can think of a few things we believe to be humane and "progressive" but might in future be judged quite harshly for.

[Emeralds]

Great fun to be able to listen to a BBC Sounds recording from 1965 instead of 2022! Thrilled that Fonteyn chose as her first disc Ravel’s score for Daphnis and Chloe (the role of Chloe was created by Ashton on Fonteyn).