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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

Drama on 3

Drama

Series of drama performances, ranging from experimental works to the Classics

Drama on 3: Decameron Nights

Giovanni Boccaccio

Robin Brooks

Robert Hollingworth

Paula Chateauneuf

Colin McFarlane

Sam Dale

Michael Bertenshaw

Monty d'Inverno

Paul Heath

Ian Conningham

Jonquil Panting

John Finnemore

Ingrid Oliver

Carrie Quinlan

Adam Thomas Wright

Lydia Leonard

Cyril Nri

Elaine Claxton

Jude Akuwudike

Hannah Genesius

Bettrys Jones

Samuel Barnett

Shaun Mason

Drama on 3: Decameron Nights: Episode 1: Five Italian Indelicacies Remixed from Boccaccio

Decameron Nights: Ten Italian Indelicacies Remixed from Boccaccio

Episode 1

Episode 1: Five Italian Indelicacies Remixed from Boccaccio

Decameron Nights

Five Italian Indelicacies Remixed from Boccaccio

BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3, Decameron Nights, Five Italian Indelicacies Remixed from Boccaccio

Terry Jones presents five of Robin Brooks's stories retold from Boccaccio's The Decameron.

Terry Jones introduces John Finnemore, Ingrid Oliver, Carrie Quinlan, Lydia Leonard, Samuel Barnett and Colin McFarlane star in stories adaptions of The Decameron by Robin Brooks.

Terry Jones introduces five ripping Renaissance yarns from The Decameron, starring John Finnemore, Ingrid Oliver, Carrie Quinlan, Lydia Leonard, Samuel Barnett and Colin McFarlane.

The one hundred stories which make up Giovanni Boccaccio's humane and comic masterpiece, come from all over the world. They are vividly reset by Boccaccio among the flourishing merchant classes in the cities of Renaissance Italy. But their witty, satirical, bawdy voice sounds utterly modern, and their subjects - love, fate, sex, religion, morality - are universal. 

Radio 3 is retelling ten of these choice Florentine Fancies, this week and next, adapted by Robin Brooks. Tonight's selection box of five tales has been broadcast every evening this week in the Essay. A further five dainties will be served in next week's Drama on 3. 

Boccaccio was born to a Florentine banking family in 1313. After an unsuccessful start in law, he turned to his true love: poetry. A humanist and a pupil of Petrarch, Boccaccio's Latin poetry was famous across Europe, and provided the sources for his near-contemporary Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and The Knight's Tale. But his real innovation was the vibrant, vernacular prose in which he wrote The Decameron. Beautifully realised in the teeming voices of merchants and prostitutes, knights and nuns, shopkeepers and conmen, these stories have become a bedrock of our storytelling tradition, mined ever since by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Moliere, Lope de Vega, Christine de Pizan, Swift, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Caryl Churchill and many more.

The music for the series is arranged and performed by Robert Hollingworth, Director of I Fagiolini, and the lutenist Paula Chateauneuf, with translations by Silvia Reseghetti. The script consultant is Guyda Armstrong.


SAINT CIAPPELLETTO

All is not what it seems, when a fourteenth-century Tony Soprano makes his deathbed confession.


FEDERIGO AND HIS FALCON

Courtly Federigo spends every last groat trying to win the affections of the beautiful Monna. But there is only one thing of his that she wants. And it has feathers.


HOW ELENA BLEW HOT AND COLD

Widowed Elena sleeps around, though she likes to keep up appearances. But when she snubs one man for the amusement of another, she picks the wrong victim.


HOW TO GET IT OFF YOUR CHEST

When Zeppa discovers his wife with his best friend, he's keen to make a proportionate response.


KIND HEARTS AND BAYONETS

Mithridanes wants to be a wise and generous benefactor. Sadly, his neighbour Nathan is always wiser and more generous. How best to deal with this problem? Wisely and generously? Or.... not so much?

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.

Terry Jones introduces Robin Brooks's retellings of stories from Boccaccio's The Decameron

Robin Brooks's retelling of stories from Boccaccio's collection of novellas The Decameron, introduced by Terry Jones

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Decameron Nights

Episode 1: Five Italian Indelicacies Remixed from Boccaccio

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