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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Twenty Minutes

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Eclectic arts magazine programme, exploring a range of fascinating subjects

Eclectic arts magazine programme, exploring a range of fascinating people, places and events

Twenty Minutes: Falstaff: The Bad Man We All Need

Falstaff: The Bad Man We All Need

08/10/2010

BBC Radio 3 - Twenty Minutes, Falstaff: The Bad Man We All Need

Paul Allen on the fascination of composers and writers with the figure of Falstaff.

Paul Allen reflects on the fascination of composers and writers with the figure of Falstaff - the bad man we all need in order to grow up, and who always dies.

Before the broadcast of Elgar's 'Falstaff' Paul Allen, who is writing a book about the character, reflects on the fascination of composers and writers with this larger than life figure.One of the first composers to use Falstaff as a subject was the much-maligned Salieri. Nicolai, Verdi, Vaughan Williams and Elgar followed. What makes a character who's not even the official protagonist of two of the three plays he's in so irresistible? Paul Allen finds the answer in two contemporary plays where Falstaff reappears under a different name and in different circumstances: Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys' and Jez Butterworth's 'Jerusalem'. In this illustrated talk he argues that Falstaff, perhaps Shakespeare's greatest invention, is the bad man we all need in order to grow up, to be - in the broadest sense of the word - educated. But there is a price to be paid for this attachment to the young. Falstaff must always die .

prod: Julian May.

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