Norman Bailey

'Working with Reggie was quite interesting because it was not a matter of him saying, you've got to do this and you've got to do that, he would play and you would sort of absorb the music. You'd have to have a certain talent for absorbing this music and I remember on a couple of occasions he would play and he would then sing and it was a question of, you pays your money and you takes your choice, because you couldn't work out which note you were supposed to be singing because he was wonderful with the piano - when he sang it himself he had about 3 pitches you had to adjust to.'

'Reggie was very, very understanding. He would make a suggestion and it was almost as an apology. He would play something and then he would say, "Have you thought of doing it in this way?" And you would say, "That's a good idea". But of course you couldn't do it any other way than Reggie's way of doing things.'

Margaret Curphy

'He sang it to me, this little quavering voice but I knew what he wanted. And he said to me, "I don't know voices, really I can't tell you how to sing but I can show you how to do it". He was very clever, he made my stamina what it was, because every time we had a session, we always finished up singing the quintet (from The Mastersingers). To start with, it moved along quite nicely and bit by bit it got slower and slower so I could cope with what he wanted.'

'He would have a say as to where you were on the stage. He set the quintet, he set where everybody had to be and how they got there. That was his production'

"If you can't fit all the notes in you're going far too fast - sing through the whole lot as if every one is a pearl."

Alberto Remedios

'I didn't start working with him until 1960 when we were on tour doing Tannhauser. I remember rehearsing with him over and over, all day long, so that by the time we were finished, we really knew our parts. We were very young and didn't like being so regimented. Even the smallest part was worked on over and over again. I can't repeat the things we said under our breath or describe the gestures we made behind his back!'

'Reggie said I had the right "clang" in my voice, a strange expression but he knew what he meant. He was very, very demanding, but, to my surprise, after the premiere performance, as I left the 'Collie', I saw Reggie sitting in the gutter outside. He was totally stunned and in a sort of daze.'

'He made me bring a note book, pencil and a German/English dictionary to the sessions. I would sing a section in German first and then we would translate every single word into English. He said he wanted me to understand the meaning of each word straight from the German text.'

'Siegfried... Everybody said that I would never be able to sing it as it is the most difficult work in the Cycle. Everybody, that is, except Reggie. He always had faith in me. We worked on the forging scene for what seemed like an eternity. I nearly wore a hole in Reggie's piano with the tap, tap, tapping. I think I could have forged the sword in my sleep after those sessions, but, of course, he was right; it became second nature and instinctive to me, which meant I could just sing and not have to worry about making the wretched sword. After performances he would have you back at 10:30 next morning for notes. And we would go through the whole opera again phrase by phrase. He would come backstage after every act to tell me if I had missed a phrase or a note and then he would say, "Never mind dear, we can go over it tomorrow morning".'

Anne Evans

'What I learnt from Reggie was about Wagner style, the use of the text, the colour of the language. We worked in English and German side by side so that if you couldn't quite get the colour in English you went back to the German, worked on that dynamics. His great thing was he hated too much metal in the voice. He hated sopranos and tenors screaming at the tops of their voices. He always talked about the G string - this warmth in the middle of the voice and the upper middle.

Norman Bailey

'The love of the language is the soul of the music.'

Anne Evans

'We worked individually with him on the Valkyries. Then he would put us together 3 at a time, then 4 at a time, so by the time you've got to the end of a year, we were all singing it together and the noise coming from 'Valhalla' in Covent Garden was quite awful.'

'Sometimes you'd open your mouth to sing a phrase, before you'd even uttered a note he'd be saying, "shush", and one would say, "but I haven't sung anything yet", and he would say, "but I know it would be too loud".'