I started seeing plays in the 60s when theatre was incredibly fertile
TOP DIRECTOR SIR RICHARD EYRE TALKS TO MARION McMULLEN ABOUT THE ART OF ADDING A TOUCH OF DRAMA TO LIFE
You’ve run the National Theatre, directed plays, musicals, films and opera. Do you enjoy the diversity?
I LOVE it. Maybe I’m just a tart, but I like working on different projects. When I’m doing a play in the theatre I don’t wish I was doing a film or an opera. I just like what I am doing. Film, opera, plays – I just give myself to what the piece is. I do absolutely live in the present tense. I don’t do nostalgia. I don’t think it’s a healthy emotion at all and looking back doesn’t greatly interest me. I enjoyed running the National but that was 20 years ago now. I just think of the next project.
Now you are 75 are you more selective about the projects you work on?
I’D love to say I pick and choose but that’s not really the case. I just bang away and am offered different things. Some I do think ‘I don’t really want to spend a year of my life on this.’ I have got a few projects that I’m thinking of doing but it depends on getting the right actors. I’m currently waiting for casting to see if a film will happen and waiting for casting to see if a play will happen.
Are you looking forward to the Met Live cinema broadcast of your production of Carmen?
I’M just thrilled. I don’t like cinema screenings in the theatre, for me it doesn’t work, it looks too vulnerable and overexposed because you just compare it with film. Whereas opera is so stylised and the music is the pulse of it. The sound has also got really good in the last few years and it is terrific sitting in a movie theatre with the wraparound sound. It’s probably heresy to say it, but the sound is better than in the opera house.
When did you first become involved in directing opera?
IN 1994 I was approached by the conductor Georg Solti, who was going to do a production of La Traviata at Covent Garden and he asked me to direct. I had never directed an opera but he asked me because he had seen Guys And Dolls and loved my production. He was an utterly beguiling, charming and wonderful man so I just said ‘yes, of course’ – and that production is still in the repertoire.
What was it like first directing Carmen at the Met in New York in 2009?
IT was absolutely wonderful. I was welcomed immediately. They were this crazy family who were passionate about what they did. The show was technically ambitious and, coming from theatre, I couldn’t bear the long set changes in opera with people sitting in the dark for five minutes. (Laughs) The audience would just mutiny in a theatre.
It had to be a 30-second change. I also wanted Carmen to do real dancing and to be lifted onto a table and then fall backwards at the end – still singing. Singer Elina Garanca said “Yes, fine, no problem. I like that.” It set a high bar for the other Carmens to follow.
What was the first show you ever saw?
THE Crazy Gang at the Victoria Palace in London. My parents were not theatre goers so the first play I saw was Hamlet with Peter O’Toole at Bristol Old Vic when I was 15 nearly 16. I thought it was incredible. I didn’t know the play and I was just capsized by it and I started going to the theatre a lot. I sort of started theatre with a clean slate.
I was very lucky I started seeing plays in the early 60s at a time when theatre was incredibly fertile. There was Olivier at the National Theatre, the RSC’s War Of The Roses and I saw director Peter Brook’s King Lear. There was also a lot of fantastic stuff in the West End with these amazing new playwrights. It was a good time.
How did you go from acting to directing?
I WAS an actor for two or three years and then thankfully I decided to direct. I was in hindsight not very good. I was fuelled by confidence and the flattery of people who thought I was better than I was. After a short time I just lost that confidence and belief in myself.
Do you think acting has helped you as a director?
YES, I really know how difficult it is sometimes to do some things as an actor. Something quite simple can be very hard. I try to be very patient with actors.
What have been some of your professional stand-out moments?
GHOSTS with Lesley Manville, Guys And Dolls and in the last two years I have been lucky to do King Lear for the BBC with Anthony Hopkins, who has been a friend for 40 years, and I did the movie The Children Act with Emma Thompson, I also did a production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night last year. Those all stand out in the last few years. Sometimes everything just comes together, but I suppose I am really hard on myself.
What else do you enjoy?
I’M writing poetry and published a book of poetry in September. I started writing a poem about my father, quite a long poem, and then I just found I couldn’t stop. I realise it’s an act of outrageous hubris but every time you put your head above the parapet is an act of hubris.
■ THE Met Live in HD: Carmen will be broadcast live to cinemas on February 2. Visit metliveinhd. co.uk to find your local cinema.