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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

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: The Soviet Valkyrie

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

The Soviet Valkyrie

23/07/2013

BBC Radio 3 - Twenty Minutes, The Soviet Valkyrie

Historian Philip Bullock explores the staging of Die Walkure at the Bolshoi in 1940.

Historian Philip Bullock explores the unlikely reconciliation of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany through Sergey Eisenstein's 1940 production of Die Walküre at the Bolshoi.

In 1940, the famed Soviet film director Sergey Eisenstein was suddenly invited to stage a production of Wagner's Die Walküre at the Bolshoi. Wagner was unlikely fare at this time - the Soviet Union was largely hostile to foreign art, especially that of its great political rival in Europe, Germany. Yet the signing of the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact in 1939 opened up a brief window for the oddest of reconciliations. The historian Philip Bullock considers Eisenstein's involvement in the production, and explores Russian interest in Wagner more generally, asking what happens when works of art get caught up in politics, propaganda and international diplomacy?

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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