In all the hoo-ha about the scheudles and messageboard changes, I forgot that there are a couple of interesting looking programmes on.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/12_december/21/radio3.shtml

Performing Britten starts this Sunday - looking at Paul Bunyan.  I think the whole series is about his operas.  Should be good.  I'll be looking forward especially to Grimes, MND, and Lucretia.

Any thoughts about this series?

Tommo

I'm certainly looking forward to it, though I'm not particularly fond of Paul Bunyan. Like Tam I'm a great admirer of Auden, but I'm not sure that libretto writing was really his forte. The words are often far too complicated, and the whole thing too diffuse, I feel. All the same, it's very touching to hear all that youthful exuberance from both him and Britten, and parts of it are quite wonderful - Inkslinger's Regret, the litany at the end.

Britten and Auden never described it as an opera - they called it a choral operetta.  Britten said of it that he felt he had learnt a great deal about what not to write for the theatre.

Well, yes, that's true - but he took his time learning, I think! The text he sent Britten for their projected Christmas Oratorio (published as "For the Time Being") was even more impossible than Bunyan - among other things, Pears recalled that he wrote lines and lines of complex verse to be set as a fugue.

However, it's no worse than Ronald Duncan's libretto for Lucretia - and, like that one, the Bunyan libretto has very memorable moments.

Mary - I do take your point about the libretto - and at the end of the day it's a very personally thing, but I just adore its poetry. I adore the lyricism of some of the music. I also think it has some pretty insightful things to say about American. Indeed, my brother (who lectures in American history), uses the litany at the end of his survey course.

regards, Tam

It was quite interesting to have an American take on it, but I thought it a pity there was only one guest -I'd sort of expected more, but it looks as if that's going to be the pattern for the whole series. Philip Langridge on Grimes next week. I suppose it does give a more precise focus. I still think the mixture of styles that was so praised is Paul Bunyan's main problem, but there is some beautiful music in there.

I've enjoyed this afternoon - the Auden songs first, then Bunyan, then Poetry Please on R4 with yet more Auden! The only thing I didn't enjoy was the weedy performance of "Rats" from Our Hunting Fathers (in any case Auden didn't write that). I didn't know who it was - turns out to be Ian Bostridge.

 Did anyone see Colin Graham's striking production of  "Paul Bunyan" for English Music Theatre (of beloved memory) in 1976?     A really hot summer and Sadler's Wells could be an endurance test at the best of times.    I hadn't seen it before and particularly warmed to an authentic country-and-western feel.   Memorable, too, in that I was seated next to Emile Belcourt and what a charming man he was.

I note that MDT March releases includes a new CD recording of "Britten on Film".    Coal Face, Night Mail, Love from a Stranger etc.

Simon Russell Beale (presumably the Night Mail narration)
Mary Carewe
Choir of King Edwards' Boys School, Birmingham
Martyn Brabbins
NMC Recording

Bws, Stanley

I thought the programme with Langridge was marvellous. I'm with John Evans in saying that I thought I knew Peter Grimes, but Langridge had so many insights - and he said something to the effect that he, and we, are only just beginning to understand it. There's always more. Quite.

#12         Yes, Mary, I do agree.      Philip Langridge was most perceptive and it was good to have his take on the hut scene with the boy.    I'd always felt that he was more self-occupied here than relating to the child.    Most of all, his closing comments about not really knowing the character had the genuine ring of a talented and modest man.

Bws     Stanley (my moniker will really have to go )