Victoria de los Angeles

“But I have never wanted to be a singer, because the exterior part of a career, I don't like very much.”

“With Geoffrey, it was the first time we did music together, we understood that everything could be well, and without any problem. And we didn't need to rehearse too much.”

“And after I compose my programs, but it is very easy because I look to the music in a very natural way without fuss, and so I look always music, in my home, like books and books and books, choose books and you read the pages, so I do this with music, and I make programs.”

“Not unless I do all these ancient and Italian or French or Baroque in the beginnning, I do German.”

“This quality, I mean Geoffrey was with me, was very easy doing - he loved me very much, I loved him very much, and we understood each other so well that it was a pleasure to make music.”

“So don't think in reality I am a singer, I think I am a human being that has sung always all her life, and has learned a little to sing, and has found herself in the middle of a career.”

“But it's always really difficult to find someone that has the qualities to be a great accompanist.”

“I like what it is to sing, or to be with the others singing, to make music, but the fuss and all the things that are the exterior part of a career, has never interested me.”

“In reality I have said very little things; I didn't point out many things to Geoffrey, I trusted very much not only his understanding of what I was doing, or what I wanted to do, in that moment.”

“Of course the death of Geoffrey has caused a lot of trauma to me generally.”

“But I think it is more difficult to do a career as a lieder singer, and there have been less lieder singers.”

“I must say to you that my intensions for instance doing German, it is because Victoria de los Angeles is nothing to do with wanting to be like a German singer.”

“Well I look for an accompanist that does his work well, this to begin.”

“To search for a pianist, it is very difficult; sometimes you find one.”

“Yes, it must be something that goes very well with my voice, let's say something that I understand that this would be good communication with the others, and I don't pretend for instance, to look for music that would be something that doesn't go with my personality.”

“After that I won a prize, I was with a group of ancient music of Spain that they helped me a lot with a grant, you see, during three years. And so I made my debut in 1944 and I found myself helping my family, it was a very poor family.”

“And finally I begin to have such a success in my examinations that I found myself in a career you see.”

“I don't like traditions, I am very personal, very independent, I don't like intimate ladies, I mean in German lieder there's a lot of copy, a lot of imitation, a lot of tradition, and this I have put it aside.”