Tony Palmer

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This article is about the film, theatre and opera director. For the American football player, see Tony Palmer (American football).

Tony Palmer is an award-winning British film director and author. His work includes over 100 films, ranging from early works with The Beatles, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa (200 Motels), to his famous classical portraits which include profiles of Maria Callas, Margot Fonteyn, John Osborne, Igor Stravinsky, Richard Wagner, Yehudi Menuhin, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams. He is also an acclaimed stage director of theatre and opera.

Among over 40 international prizes for his work are 12 Gold Medals from the New York Film Festival as well as numerous BAFTAs and Emmy Awards. Tony Palmer is the only person to have won the Prix Italia twice. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and an honorary citizen of both New Orleans and Athens.

Contents

[edit] Background

From Cambridge University (where he was also President of the Marlowe Society), he joined the BBC. Following an apprenticeship with Ken Russell and Jonathan Miller, Palmer's first major film, Benjamin Britten & his Festival, became the first BBC film to be networked in the U.S.A. With his second film, All My Loving, an examination of rock 'n' roll & politics in the late 1960s, he achieved considerable notoriety overnight.

In 1989, he was awarded a huge retrospective of his work at the National Film Theatre in London, the first maker of arts films to be so honoured.

[edit] Opera and theatre

In addition to films, Tony Palmer has also directed in the theatre and in the opera house. After a successful debut at the Zurich Opera House with Peter Grimes ("the high point of the season", Neue Zürcher Zeitung), he had a double triumph in Karlsruhe, War and Peace, and again in Zurich with Berlioz's masterpiece, The Trojans ("marvellous" - London Daily Express). In Saint Petersburg, he directed the Russian premiere of Parsifal ("world class" - The Times), conducted by Valery Gergiev, with Plácido Domingo. He has also directed in Hamburg, Munich, Augsburg, Savonlinna, Berlin and Helsinki and recently became the first Western director ever to work at the Bolshoi in Moscow.

Parsifal won Best Theatre Production ('Casta Diva') in Moscow, 1997, as well as a 'Golden Mask'. On the West End stage he has directed the world premiere of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger Part Two, Déjà Vu. Mr Palmer also presented the BBC Radio 3 Arts magazine 'Night Waves', for which he won a Sony Award for best arts programme.

[edit] Writing

Tony Palmer has published several books, and has written for The New York Times, The Times, Punch, Life magazine etc. From 1967-74 he was a regular music critic for The Observer. From 1969-74 he had a weekly column in The Spectator entitled 'Notes from the Underground'.

[edit] Filmography

  • Isadora [as Producer - Director Ken Russell] (1966)
  • Alice in Wonderland [as Producer - Director Jonathan Miller] (1966)
  • The Art of Conducting - with Georg Solti (1966)
  • Up the Theatre - with Judi Dench (1966)
  • Conceit (1967)
  • Benjamin Britten & his Festival (1967)
  • Burning Fiery Furnace (1967)
  • Corbusier (1967)
  • Twice a Fortnight - with Terry Jones & Michael Palin (1967)
  • All My Loving (1968)
  • Cream 'Farewell Concert' (1968)
  • The World of Peter Sellers (1969)
  • How It Is (1969)
  • Rope Ladder to the Moon - Jack Bruce (1969)
  • Fairport Convention & Colosseum (1970)
  • Glad All Over (1970)
  • National Youth Theatre - Michael Croft (1970)
  • 200 Motels - Frank Zappa (1971)
  • Brighton Breezy (1971)
  • Mahler 9 - with Leonard Bernstein (1971)
  • Ginger Baker in Africa (1971)
  • Birmingham (1971)
  • The Pursuit of Happiness (1972)
  • Bird on a Wire - with Leonard Cohen (1972)
  • The World of Liberace (1972)
  • The World of Hugh Hefner (1973)
  • International Youth Orchestra (1973)
  • Rory Gallagher - Irish Tour (1974)
  • The World of Miss World (1974)
  • Harriet at the Circus / Harriet at Sea / Harriet in a Balloon / Harriet at War / Harriet at the Opera / Harriet at Butlins (1974)
  • Tangerine Dream - live in Coventry Cathedral (1975)
  • All You Need is Love (1975/6)
  • All This & World War II (1976)
  • The Wigan Casino - the story of break-dancing (1977)
  • Biddu (1977)
  • The Edinburgh Festival (1977)
  • The Mighty Wurlitzer (1978)
  • The Edinburgh Festival Revisited (1978)
  • The Space Movie - NASA's official 10th anniversary film, music by Mike Oldfield (1979)
  • Pride of Place [6 parts] (1979)
  • A Time There Was - profile of Benjamin Britten (1979)
  • First Edition (1980)
  • At the Haunted End of the Day - profile of William Walton (1980)
  • Death in Venice - opera by Benjamin Britten (1981)
  • Once, at a Border... - profile of Stravinsky (1982)
  • Wagner - by Charles Wood (1983)
  • Primal Scream - Art Janov (1984)
  • Puccini - with Virginia McKenna & Robert Stephens (1984)
  • God Rot Tunbridge Wells - by John Osborne (1984/5)
  • Mozart in Japan - with Mitsuko Uchida (1986)
  • Testimony - starring Ben Kingsley (1987)
  • Maria Callas (1987)
  • In From The Cold? - Richard Burton (1988)
  • Dvořák in Love? - Julian Lloyd Webber (1988)
  • Hindemith - a Pilgrim's Progress - with John Gielgud (1989)
  • The Children - starring Kim Novak, Ben Kingsley, Geraldine Chaplin (1989)
  • Menuhin, a Family Story (1990)
  • I, Berlioz - with Corin Redgrave (1992)
  • Symphony of Sorrowful Songs - Górecki (1993)
  • A Short Film About Loving - with Peter Sellars (1994)
  • O Fortuna - Carl Orff (1995)
  • England, my England - Henry Purcell (1995)
  • Brahms & The Little Singing Girls (1996)
  • Michael Crawford, a true story (1996)
  • Hail Bop - a profile of John Adams (1997)
  • Parsifal - with Domingo & Gergiev (1997)
  • The Harvest of Sorrow - Rachmaninoff, with the Kirov Opera (1998)
  • The Kindness of Strangers - André Previn (1998)
  • Valentina Igoshina plays Chopin (1999)
  • The Strange Case of Delfina Potocka - Chopin, with Penelope Wilton (1999)
  • Foreign Aids - Pieter-Dirk Uys on tour (2001)
  • Ladies & Gentlemen, Miss Renée Fleming (2002)
  • Hero - The Story of Bobby Moore - produced by David Frost (2002)
  • Toward the Unknown Region - Malcolm Arnold. A Story of Survival (2003)
  • John Osborne & The Gift of Friendship (2003)
  • Ivry Gitlis & The Great Tradition (2004)
  • The Adventures of Benjamin Schmid (2005)
  • Margot - Margot Fonteyn (2005)
  • The Salzburg Festival - A Brief History (2006)
  • "O Thou Transcendent..." - The Life of Vaughan Williams (2007)

Testimony DVD

Malcolm Arnold DVD

[edit] List of opera and theatre works

(Winner of the Casta Diva prize)

[edit] Books

  • Born Under a Bad Sign (1970)
  • The Trials of Oz (1971)
  • Electric Revolution (1971)
  • The Things I Love - Liberace (1976)
  • All You Need Is Love (1976)
  • Charles II - Portrait of an Age (1979)
  • Life on the Road - Julian Bream biography (1982)
  • Menuhin - a Family Story (1991)
  • Break of Day- A story about life before, after and during the kakoda trail (2007)