Despite Andrew Porter’s words of worship in The New
Yorker, ‘I have long revered Dame Janet Baker as a
goddess made of finer stuff than the mere mortal clay’,
she considers herself ‘an extremely lucky human being’.
This unintended riposte comes from her 1982 book Full
Circle from which this video is derived and takes its
name. In that year Baker was approaching fifty - she is
73 this month, August 2006 - when she stunned the musical
world with the announcement that she intended to retire
from the opera stage.
This video is of her farewell performances from the
autumn of 1981 through to the following summer at three of
her favourite English venues, Covent Garden, ENO and Glyndebourne,
behaving not in any way like Melba with endless farewell
appearances but making genuine appreciative gestures in saying
goodbye to her many supporters and admirers. In fact it would
appear that the engagements came first and the decision to
call it a day dawned upon her as a result.
For 25 years she had been before the public since taking
second prize - after winners Joyce Barker and Elizabeth Simon,
who had nothing more than respectable careers thereafter
- in the highly prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Award in 1956.
In terms of opera, in which incidentally she never sang away
from Britain, Handel featured strongly in her repertoire,
Eduige in Rodelinda, Irene in Tamerlano, and
the title roles in Ariodante and Orlando. Then
there were the five Aldeburgh years (1971-1976) with the
English Opera Group in Britten’s Albert Herring and Owen
Wingrave. Mozart roles included Dorabella in Cosi
fan tutte and Idamante in Idomeneo, while Berlioz,
Strauss and Walton were represented by Dido, Octavian and
Cressida respectively.
The book is no autobiography but a diary of those ten
months, from the first night of Alceste to the last
night of Orfeo at Glyndebourne. In similar fashion,
this video-diary follows her with clips from rehearsals and
performances of all three operas. It also concentrates upon
the piecing together of the various elements from a coaching/language
session, through a production rehearsal and first costume
fitting to the first night at Covent Garden. There follows
a beautiful performance of ‘She moves thro’ the fair’ accompanied
by Martin Isepp as part of a Carnegie Hall recital concluding
an American tour in January 1981. Tensions arise from the
tedium of camera rehearsals for the BBC recording of Mary
Stuart at ENO, whether distracting cue lights on the
cameras should be on or off in rehearsals when it is known
that they will not be on in the performances. Mountains are
easily made of molehills at such moments, though it is perfectly
reasonable for the great Dame to object to a flashing red
light at a dramatically significant moment.
Then it’s on to Aberdeen and June Gordon’s amateur musical
extravaganzas at her home Haddo House, a vast Gothic pile
in which she put on choral and operatic festivals, in this
case Gerontius in which Baker excelled as the Angel.
Part of the Farewell is sung, poignantly, she notes in the
book but not in the film, at the same time on the afternoon
of Sunday 16 May 1982 as her close friend and agent Emmie
Tillett suddenly died after tending her garden in Suffolk.
They had had a pact to retire together, but Emmie beat her
to it.
Baker began her operatic career as a member of the Glyndebourne
chorus in 1956, and it’s here where she ends it in Orfeo,
in the ‘village hall’ as it was affectionately known, not
the pukka opera house it is today. Whether the introduction
to Che faro should have been visually accompanied
by shots of orchestra members playing croquet or picnic hampers
partially covered by blankets ready for the interval audience
is a moot directorial point, but predictably and mercifully
it cuts away to Baker’s interpretation of this evergreen
classic.
What do we get to know about Baker? She is a Yorkshire
lass of grit and determination, resolute in pursuing her
career at the expense of having a family - her devoted husband
Keith was also her indispensable business manager. She recognises
her gift as God-given from which she gets simple joy, but
she also knows that her gut feeling to take early retirement
was the right one. Mary Stuart got it right with her last
words ‘my end is my beginning’, but Baker’s last words on
the film before the credits roll are ‘thanks to all my colleagues’,
and she is right. Many such as Peter Hall, John Copley, Raymond
Leppard, Charles Mackerras, Bernard Haitink, Martin Isepp,
Janine Reiss, Jean Mallandaine, Rosalind Plowright, Elizabeth
Speiser, Elizabeth Gale, John Tomlinson, Brian Dickie, John
Tooley, all of whom feature or are identifiable at some point
in the film. Countless other choristers, orchestral players,
coaches, and singing colleagues played their part. When you
meet Janet Baker you sense a certain shyness and reticence,
which some among the profession have interpreted as standoffishness,
even referring to her as Dame Granite, but they were wrong.
This film goes a long way towards correcting the impression.
She has about her an abundance of warmth, affection and sensitivity,
not only as a human being but particularly as a consummate
artist.
Early in the book and probably overwhelmed by her sadness
at the death of her close friend, the politician and music-lover
Edward Boyle, she makes the extraordinary statement, ‘five
minutes after I walk off the platform for the last time,
I shall be forgotten’. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
Christopher Fifield
BUY NOW
WARNER MUSIC
DIVISION 50-51011-4855-2-7 
[72:00] 
