What goes into the making of a major musical television event? It doesn't happen overnight--or even over weeks or months. Shows such as Great Performances' Star Crossed Lovers, which aired on WTTW, Friday, March 5, 1999 at 8 p.m., (Sunday February 14th 1999 on PBS) take years of complex planning and execution. WTTW's Executive Producer for Cultural and Entertainment Programming, Fawn Ring, takes you behind the scenes from the moment of inspiration to the recording of this exquisite performance that pays tribute to musical literature's ill-fated couples.

What makes forbidden, unrequited, tragic love so deeply compelling? Do we experience the sweetness of love more fully when it's set against the bitterness of loss? One thing is certain: Throw an obstacle in the path of romance and everyone responds.

The list of ill-fated lovers in literature is endless. Think of Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Othello and Desdemona, and so many others. Consumed by their innocent, delicious passion, the lovers are caught in circumstances that predestine their demise. We know their fate at the outset, and perhaps because we are helpless to affect it, we suffer their pain all the more acutely.

Several of my file drawers, overstuffed with manila folders labeled Love show, Valentine's show, Romeo and Juliet, and finally Lovers, tell the story of a labor of love--literally. The earliest scribbled sketches of ideas for a new television project with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra date from mid-1994. In February 1999, the program hit the airwaves: Great Performances' Star Crossed Lovers featuring Daniel Barenboim and his majestic orchestra, soprano Renée Fleming, tenor Placido Domingo, and hosts Lynn Redgrave and Timothy Dalton.

Our program draws its name from one of the very first lines in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Ironically, Shakespeare wrote his masterpiece in mere months. It took many more individuals from WTTW and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra four years to create Star Crossed Lovers.

WTTW has broadcast a number of Chicago Symphony concerts in the past. The late Sir Georg Solti reinterpreted several of Beethoven's symphonies for national television audiences in the 1980s. Daniel Barenboim took the baton as Music Director in 1991 and explored the intricacies of Richard Strauss's revolutionary tone poems and the eloquence of Brahms's symphonies. In 1994, when Mr. Barenboim and his colleagues at Orchestra Hall approached WTTW and Great Performances to showcase the orchestra again, they proposed a program linked by a universal theme teeming with rich musical possibilities: love--romantic, passionate, intoxicating love.

Great Performances was very interested, and I immediately fell in love with the idea. The details were fuzzy, of course, but I had a striking image of how the program might look and feel. I imagined a warm, romantically lit stage supporting sublime performances by the world's finest orchestral and vocal musicians, connected by the great poetry and prose of love.

The practical side of me responded, too. Clearly, there was plenty of fine material available, and the enormous prestige of the Chicago Symphony was certain to deliver the best possible guest artists. The program was a natural!

In reality, the program evolved slowly--very slowly. Ideas were researched, adopted, researched again, and discarded. Funding was a struggle. Although Great Performances pledged to cover some of the more than $600,000 in costs, it was up to WTTW and the CSO to raise two-thirds of the budget. Often more immediate concerns--another television project under deadline at WTTW or, for the Chicago Symphony, managing a full concert season while undertaking a massive building renovation--took precedence over developing an idea that would require tremendous effort and lots of money, and might not come to fruition.

Timothy hosting Star Crossed Lovers.

The Chicago Symphony's creative group for the project included operations manager Vanessa Moss, writer and program annotator Phillip Huscher, and artistic administrator Martha Gilmer, with Mr. Barenboim advising. We set out to take an appealing but broad subject--love--and turn it into a performance program with a clear focus and a strong narrative. At first, a recent Chicago Symphony youth concert of music inspired by the Romeo and Juliet story seemed to hold the answer. The subject was accessible and the story was...well, Shakespeare.

Finding the artists and scheduling the taping were trickier. Soloists and major orchestras are booked three to four years in advance. Singers have a finite number of roles they can perform (each voice is unique in its range, sound, and color) and limited time to learn new material. We faced the daunting challenge of finding a date for the concert in the CSO's already full schedule while searching for singers of international stature who could be available and sing the roles.

It soon became obvious to us that organizing the show around the music of the Romeo and Juliet story was unworkable. We regrouped and concentrated on finding exceptional singers, believing their repertoire would lead us naturally to a suitable concept.

Lynn Redgrave and Timothy co-hosting Star Crossed Lovers.

In the spring of 1997, the pieces started to fall into place. The funding prospects looked promising. Mr. Barenboim and Placido Domingo had recently collaborated on an opera in Europe and were eager to perform together again. Mr. Domingo agreed to work our program into his remarkably busy schedule. Happily, the Lyric Opera of Chicago generously rescheduled two rehearsals for The Marriage of Figaro in order to make Renee Fleming's time available to us. Then, when Mr. Barenboim evaluated the musical options, Star Crossed Lovers became our theme and working title. The irresistible stories inspired by ill-fated love would provide the common thread.

The taping was set for January 26, 1998. By September 1997, we were fully immersed in production. There was much to do: We needed hosts for the program--ideally an actor-and-actress couple or real-life lovers--and the choice of director was up in the air. The revamped Symphony Center was in the process of opening, presenting us with new logistical challenges, many of them still unknown.

The next four months remain a blur. Our small staff at WTTW routinely worked 12-hour days, often six and seven days a week. We were in continual contact with our colleagues at the CSO, who maintained the same exhausting schedule. Detailed arrangements were hammered out with representatives for the singers. After an exhaustive search, we were thrilled when Lynn Redgrave agreed in late December to host the program. She suggested that her friend Timothy Dalton would be an excellent choice as co-host, and in early January he committed to join her.

The writing team was assembled, and we pored over anthologies containing Shakespeare's sonnets and the dramas Othello and Romeo and Juliet. My home and office were strewn with books of love poetry. In the last week before the performance, we wrote the script over late-night Chinese take-out dinners, with Lynn and Tim contributing suggestions via telephone.

Occasionally, obstacles arose and we grappled with surmounting them. Slow, steady progress reassured us. I regularly reminded myself of the extreme highs and lows of past productions, and made a point to say something encouraging each morning both to my colleagues and to the haggard face in my mirror.

Eight days before the concert, Mr. Barenboim's father died. The conductor cancelled his subscription concerts and flew to Israel for the funeral. He returned the night before the first rehearsal for Star Crossed Lovers, clearly tired, drained, and sad. His loss quickly wrenched my worries about the show into perspective.

The rehearsals and concert were a blur, but I vividly remember sitting in the remote production truck parked in the alley behind the new Symphony Center. It was the evening of the taping, and the control room was a scene of skillfully controlled chaos--director Bill Cosel calling out his camera shots, his associate director cueing nine cameramen to their next shot through a headset, and producer Michael Lorentz troubleshooting on a separate line. The intense patter of the control room enveloped me.

Suddenly, the noise died away. All I could see and hear was the magic on the monitor in front of me. Placido Domingo, dashing as the Moor Othello, lifted Renee Fleming's beautiful face to his--the face of Othello's beloved wife, Desdemona--and declared his love. The couple was oblivious to the tragedy that would befall them just a few scenes later in Shakespeare's powerful drama. At that moment, I heard nothing but Giuseppe Verdi's remarkable music, and the only people around were the singers, Mr. Barenboim, and his exquisite orchestra.

Watching this captivating moment, I recalled seeing it in my mind's eye several years before, when the television program idea was in its infancy. That night, four years later, we finally captured it on the screen.

I would like to say a very special heart felt thank you to both Fawn Ring who wrote the above and Denise Kowalski (Corporate Communications, WTTW/WFMT) who have given me permission to have this review of Star Crossed Lovers here on this page for us all to enjoy.

All About Star Crossed Lovers - Pages from the Executive Producer's Journal by Fawn Ring. © Copyright Executive Producer Fawn Ring. All Rights Reserved.

Star Crossed Lovers was produced by WTTW Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and PBS Great Performances.

'Chuck' vs. the Retrospective Interview, Part 4 Timothy Dalton and Linda Hamilton join in the fun. By Alan Sepinwall - January 26, 2012

The following is an interview that producers and creators of Chuck Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz has recently given. I have only put here Chris and Josh chatting about Timothy but if you would like to read the wonderful interview that Alan Sepinwall had with them in full then here is the link for you:

• Chris Fedek and Josh Schwartz Interview - In Full.

Chuck aired its series finale on January 27 at 8.00 PM on NBC, and it's time to get together with creators Chris Fedak and Josh Schwartz, to discuss the show's fourth season.

Josh Schwartz actually only cameos at the beginning of this one, as he had to leave early to attend a meeting for another show he works on. After he left, Chris Fedak and I took a ride to the empty stage on the Warner Bros. lot that used to house the Buy More set, to get one last look at a place where so many crazy things (including shootouts, sexy entrances and the inaugural Jeffster performance) had happened over the life of the series.

Now, season three ends. Chuck has told Ellie he is going to quit the CIA and he's going to work out of his dad's basement and all of that, and then you walk that back pretty quickly at the start of season four.

Josh Schwartz: Yeah, we were kind of made to.

Chris Fedak: Yeah.

Alan Sepinwall: Really?

Chris Fedak: The one thing you brought up - what would we have done earlier - and keeping Ellie out of the loop for so long. If we could do it all over again, that would have been something (to do sooner).

Alan Sepinwall: Well, in both the season three finale and then the season four finale, there were big changes, but then reverted back to other things quickly.

Chris Fedak: How so?

Alan Sepinwall: Like, Morgan is only the Intersect for about four or five episodes.

Chris Fedak: Yeah, but it's still four or five episodes.

Josh Schwartz: It's half the season.

Chris Fedak: It's a third of the season and we kind of built it that way, but when we talk about the money on the show, Carmichael Industries uses Castle. That's a dynamic where you make the show make sense, but it is a different type of entity. It's much more of a freelance operation, especially in that first half of the season.

If the budget had been different, and you're not married to the sets as the ones you had to keep using, would they still be operating out of the Buy More and all of that or might you have done something else?

Josh Schwartz: Well we flirted with it. Look, we blew up the Buy More. We were prepared to walk away from the Buy More and find new jobs and reasons for keeping Big Mike, Jeff and Lester in the show and I think there was a lot of concern about the Buy More an iconic element of the show. "It's fine if you want to blow it up, but it better get rebuilt," and that led to a lot of fun of like the new kind of...

Chris Fedak: Spy version of it.

Josh Schwartz: Yeah, high end and version of Buy More. It was basically, we vacuumed the carpets. (Schwartz's assistant tells him he has to go to a meeting.)

Alan Sepinwall: All right, I will continue with Fedak.

Josh Schwartz: Yeah, I don't get to be part of anything else after the end of season three? Linda Hamilton? Timothy Dalton? Can I tell the Timothy Dalton story?

Chris Fedak: Please.

The Timothy Dalton Story.

Timothy as Volkoff in Chuck.

Josh Schwartz: So we're obsessed with Timothy, with James Bond obviously and Timothy Dalton being one of the only-what-four guys, five guys and we wanted him forever. We've always wanted Timothy Dalton on the show. So we finally get him in the room and we're told one thing: "Don't mention Bond." So I have to scrub my office because I literally have James Bond trading cards and the mug Chris gave me. A lot of James Bond paraphernalia in the room and so we're sitting there. We're not talking about James Bond and talking about Volkoff and the character and all that and there is this rack of books, which was over here before and this is from my old office. I haven't looked at it in forever and we're like almost done with the meeting. We're like five minutes from closing and this book (a James Bond coffee table book with a "007" on the spine) is literally in the back. And all of the sudden he just looks over from across the room and he sees it in the tiniest font and he goes, "Well there it is: 007." Fedak and I are like, "He just said 007 in front of us! It was amazing!" And then he started talking about it. I don't know who said it was his issue because he was very upfront. It was thrilling for us.

Chris Fedak: But we thought we had been found out. We were trying to be so cool: "He's not going to be anything like James Bond. We don't even know what that is."

Josh Schwartz: Yeah. "We're fairly familiar with James, but you were James Bond? That's so weird!" And we were terrified afterwards that we had blown it, but he signed on. And he was the most fun.

Alan Sepinwall: (Schwartz exits, and we go to the empty stage, where a crewmember asks Fedak to pose - in front of where the Nerd Herd desk used to be - for a time-lapse video they're doing of the set's deconstruction. I stand off to the side and snap this picture, and then we go to Fedak's office to continue the discussion.)

Alan Sepinwall: Josh told the Dalton story before. With Linda Hamilton, how did you land on her as Mrs. Bartowski?

Chris Fedak: Same way as we landed on Dalton in that there is a short list that we put together and Linda was always if not at the top, always in the world of the person that we were looking for. So we sat down with her as well and we had a great meeting and she was just lovely to work with and she was also interested in doing something on a lighter show. She wanted to do something that was a little more comic and a little warmer than some of the stuff that she had done, the kind of iconic Linda Hamilton stuff, almost like back to the "Beauty and the Beast" days. That was a great conversation and she was phenomenal for us.

Alan Sepinwall: Were you prepared for how funny Dalton was going to be?

Chris Fedak: Yeah, we knew, especially coming off of what he had done with Hot Fuzz the fun Dalton side of his characters that are outside of the Bond world, like The Rocketeer. You could see that Timothy really enjoys having fun and likes the more comic tone. He also really savors a villain and he loved Volkoff. All the stuff that we came up for Volkoff was based very much around the conversation we had with him, because with Timothy what's very different from any other actor is that Tim likes to come in and talk to the writer and perform the part with the writer before the show shoots. And it's great because he comes in; he wants to talk about everything and then he'll perform bits and pieces of it, so you've written the monologue and Tim is like, "I want to really run at it." And then he'll do it and it's Timothy freaking Dalton doing a big performance here in your office and you're just like, "Please, please, please deliver 50% of that," and he always did more. If you look at season four it's definitely a love letter to villains. Dalton was a fantastic part of the show and it was a character that we more and more obsessed over.

Chuck vs. the Retrospective Interview, Part 4 Timothy Dalton and Linda Hamilton join in the fun. © Copyright Alan Sepinwall Hitfix - Thursday, January 26, 2012. All Rights Reserved.

I would like to give a big thank you to Dawn who sent the above interview to me for this months Newsletter Page.

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Critic's Corner.

Welcome to Critic's Corner, Sheila who is a member of the group gave me this idea and I think it is great! This is a part of the page where you can add your own review of Timothy's movies and have it posted here, and this month Julie, who is our new member of the group from Scotland, has very kindly written her wonderful account of when she went to see Timothy on stage in London in A Touch Of The Poet and here it is for you:

Seeing Timothy in A Touch Of The Poet - London February 1988.

Timothy as seen in A Touch of The Poet.

We live in a world where there is far too little magic, and when an opportunity to make a dream reality arises, we have to snatch it while we can. These were my thoughts when I managed to book tickets for two performances of A Touch of the Poet at the Young Vic Theatre in London in February 1988. The tickets and the weekend were an early 30th birthday present to myself, and an experience that I am so glad was mine for 48 short hours.

A Touch of the Poet is a rarely performed play by American dramatist Eugene O Neill - and to see it done in a small intimate theatre with Timothy Dalton and Vanessa Redgrave in the two leading roles, supported by a cast of notable character actors was a rare opportunity.

I will confess to having fallen in love with Timothy from the moment I saw him in a children's television fairy tale in 1969, and from that moment I was smitten. Every time he was in a film, I rushed to see it. The usher in my local flea pit must have wondered what a primary school girl was doing watching a re-run of the Lion In Winter in 1970. I camped out in the cinema the week that Wuthering Heights was showing in Wick in 1972. However seeing him on stage was my dream - and this was a very special experience indeed.

The Young Vic isn't just a theatre. It is a small venue and operates as theatre in the round. This means that the cast are on a small square platform surrounded on all four sides by the audience, and all entrances are via the four ramps at each corner. Director David Thacker is closely associated with the theatre where he produced much of the later work of the great Arthur Miller. As a teacher of English, this place meant a great deal for all of those reasons.

The theme of A Touch of the Poet is self deception and facing up to reality. Irish immigrant and shebeen keeper Cornelius Melody (Timothy) has dreams of his family achieving status in the New World. The prospective match of his daughter (Rudi Davis) to the son of a wealthy family appears to secure this. However Cornelius is a man in love with dreams of his past in particular the moment when he was: 'commended for m'bravery by Lord Wellington, then Sir Arthur Wellesley' at the battle of Talavera.

There are obstacles to his dreams, in particular his devoted wife Norah (played so sympathetically by Vanessa Redgrave) who attends to his every whim, while apologising for her very existence all the way through the play. She is a reminder of where he really comes from and her constant apology for her 'sin' of conceiving her daughter before marriage is an irritant to him.

His dreams are inevitably crushed. The imperious matriarch or 'pale bitch' (a very stylised performance by Amanda Boxer) reminds Cornelius that the class system is very much alive and well in the New World as in the old, and her remarks about an eccentric relative who kept on trying on his old military uniform ring a chord in his ear as we have already seen him behave in the exact same way.

Finally, he succumbs to defeat, and in a gloriously gory fight scene with John McEnery, we see him decide to settle for what he has, announcing he is "off to join the boys in the bar".

There are moments of real poignancy in this play and I wonder why it doesn't appear on more school and university reading lists as a critique of the American dream it surely ranks alongside Miller's 'Death of a Salesman.' However, in order for it to work, the audience must feel for the character of Cornelius and to have such a wonderful actor as Timothy in the role is a rare treat.

Some lines really got me in the stomach Norah's apology for having "a devil of a time with the toast" as she walks in barefoot to wait on Cornelius made me want to defend her with every last breath.

However, it was seeing Timothy in costume that really did it I swear the green velvet jacket he brushed imaginary dirt from was identical to the one he wore as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. And after he staggers in, stage blood dripping from his mouth at the fight scene, he was sprawled across a wooden chair, with his hand as close to me as the screen of the laptop on which I am typing this. I was so tempted to touch him, but I remembered my place and sat on my hands instead.

As a former rock writer I've never had a problem with blagging my way into the company of the famous but when it came to hanging about at the stage door to try and pass a word with the cast, on this occasion I was surprisingly shy. Instead I left two distinctive fishing flies I'd brought with me on the plane from the Highlands (I set off alarms with them and delayed us by minutes), along with my message of admiration.

The next day my mum and I attended the matinee, and just before Tim made his entrance at the fight scene (we were in the back row this time) she twitched the curtain and peeked at him and for this I apologise profusely and she swore the 'blood' on his knuckles was ox blood shoe polish. During my years teaching drama I've used this as an example of stage make up improvisation.

Back at the Waldorf, where I was staying, I passed by the starry audience of Mack and Mabel - which had one of its rare charity performances that same weekend. I can claim to have been in the same room as Princess Diana; ridden in the lift with Kylie Minogue, and overheard Brian Cox discuss his latest film role at the next table. But what sticks in my mind? That moment when I sat so close to Timothy.

So, Mr Dalton I'm sure I'm not the only lovelorn fan longing to book a seat for your next production in the West End. Please, please please make it soon.

Seeing Timothy in A Touch Of The Poet - London February 1988. © Copyright Julie From Scotland - February 2012. All Rights Reserved.

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Shattered Dreamland - Bernadette's New Book.

I have had an e-mail from Bernadette, who is a member of the group, and she has written a book 'Shattered Dreamland' and...it is now for sale at Amazon.com. Many congratulations Bernadette!

I think, if I am right, the main character in her book is based on Timothy from his projects. If you would like to see her book and or purchase it then here is the links for you:

• Shattered Dreamland

• Bernadette's Shattered Dreamland Book Website

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Timothy's Project Question of the Month for February 2012.

Each month we have a Timothy question of the month, just for a bit of fun. It could be a quote from one of Timothy's films or projects, a picture, or some other information to test you on. I do of course understand that not all of you have seen everything that Timothy has done, so I will be going through all his work, to make it fair, but it is fun to guess though. I will give you the answer on this page at the beginning of each month, and set the next question at that time too.

The question and answer to the January Timothy question was:

Question: What project is Timothy in pictured above?

Answer: Timothy was in Framed.

I would like to say congratulations to everyone that got the above question correct!

Here is the Timothy Question of the Month for February 2012:-

Timothy Dalton.

Question: What project is Timothy in pictured above and what was his character name?

Here is your clue: This project is a Western and is about one Outlaw in particular.

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Timothy Dalton Chat Group Birthdays for February 2012.

• Deb who lives in Australia has a birthday on February 25.

• Phoebe who lives in the States has a birthday on February 28.

All of us in The Timothy Dalton Chat Group send you lots of love and hope you both have a wonderful birthday!

With very warm wishes,

Deb
Coordinator, The Timothy Dalton Chat Group.

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