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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Private Passions Podcast

Private Passions

Discussion & Talk

Music: Classical

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates, and talk about the influence music has had on their lives

Private Passions: Es Devlin

12/08/2012

Es Devlin

BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, Es Devlin

Michael Berkeley's guest is Es Devlin, designer of the London Olympic closing ceremony.

Michael Berkeley's guest is stage designer Es Devlin. Her choices include music from Britten, Wagner, Kanye West and Jay Z, Berlioz, Janacek, Keith Jarrett and Nina Simone.

Michael Berkeley's guest today is the stage designer Es Devlin, whose internationally-renowned stage and costume designs range from opera, ballet, dance, theatre, film and TV to pop, rock and rap. Her work has won many awards, including an Olivier Award for Best Costume Design and Linbury and TPi prizes. She studied music at the Royal Academy of Music as a teenager, before going on to study English Literature, Fine Art and set design. Her highly imaginative and creative designs are in demand all over the world: In 2012 alone, as well as designing the Olympic Closing Ceremony, she has worked on David McVicar's productions of Les Troyens and Salome at the ROH, Keith Warner's Parsifal and Francisco Negrin's Cunning Little Vixen at the Royal Danish Opera, Simon McBurney's The Master and Margarita at Theatre de Complicite, Russell Maliphant's The Rodin Project at Sadlers Wells, and with singer Rihanna at the Grammy and Brit Awards. She works regularly with Lady Gaga and Kanye West, and this year her sets will be seen throughout the world in the tour of Batman Live.

Her choices for Private Passions are eclectic. They begin with an extract from Britten's opera 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', which she finds intriguing and bewitching; and continue with a Bulgarian folksong; the scene change music between Act I Scenes 1 and 2 of Wagner's 'Parsifal' in which 'time becomes space'; Diamonds from Sierra Leone (a remix of the John Barry/Shirley Bassey number) by rappers Kanye West and Jay Z; an extract from Berlioz's Les Troyens, which is currently in production at the Royal Opera House; the radiant final scene from Janacek's first opera Jenufa; Keith Jarrett improvising in The Koln Concert and Nina Simone singing Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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