Peter Grimes
From New Theatre, Cardiff,
Welsh National Opera's new production of Britten's timeless classic. The opera paints a compelling portrait of a doomed outsider in the claustrophobic setting of a Suffolk fishing community. It is one of the century's greatest operas, and Peter Grimes one of the most vivid of all operatic characters.
Introduced by Humphrey Carpenter.
Welsh National Opera Chorus and Orchestra, conductor Carlo Rizzi
Parti
8.10 The Original Peter Grimes
Tom Rosenthal compares the original Peter Grimes as depicted in the poem by the eccentric Suffolk poet
George Crabbe to the one that
Britten put on the stage. The blunt, damaged but heroic character of Britten's Grimes is a long way from the sadistic bully of the Crabbe poem, and Tom Rosenthal explores the reasons that might lie behind Britten's decision to change the original.
8.30 Part 2
9.25 Postscript
Doctors of Philosophy
Alain de Botton looks to some of the great thinkers of the past in the hope of finding philosophical cures for some everyday ills.
3: Bewildered by semantics, semiotics or systems analysis? Alain de Botton finds Montaigne has a message for those with a sense of intellectual inferiority.
9.50 Part 3