by Nikolai Gogol
Translated by Prince Mirsky
Music composed and conducted by Humphrey Searle
Production by H. B. Fortuln
(The recorded broadcast of March 6)
The Diary of a Madman was written in 1834, when Gogol was twenty-four. Clinical self-observation has gone into the weird imaginings of the downtrodden government clerk whose hopeless passion for his Excellency's daughter draws him into megalomania. The Spanish succession troubles in 1833 cause him to imagine himself the new Spanish king.