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Front Row: AS Byatt on Picasso, and tenor Vittorio Grigolo

AS Byatt on Picasso, and tenor Vittorio Grigolo

15/02/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, AS Byatt on Picasso, and tenor Vittorio Grigolo

A S Byatt on a new Picasso exhibition, plus tenor Vittorio Grigolo, and chemistry goes pop

A S Byatt reviews Picasso and Modern British Art, Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo, French film Hadewijch, and the periodic table in pop.

With Mark Lawson. 

Novelist A S Byatt discusses a new exhibition Picasso and Modern British Art at Tate Britain, which examines Picasso's relationship with the country and how British artists including Francis Bacon, David Hockney and Henry Moore have responded to his work. 

As a child, Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo sang for the Sistine Chapel choir, before making his debut at La Scala in Milan at the age of 23. Grigolo explains why he likes to cross over from classical to pop, from Keane's Bed-Shaped to La Donna E Mobile, and why he never talks to his wife before a concert.

Kate Saunders reviews a new French film Hadewijch, about a young Christian fanatic who befriends a group of Muslims and finds herself being led down paths which put her life in danger.

And with David Guetta's single Titanium doing well in the charts, David Quantick considers how chemical elements and the periodic table have inspired a variety of songwriters. 

Producer Jerome Weatherald.

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