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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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Opera on 3

Music: Classical: Opera

Programme presenting rare and fascinating operatic performances

Programme presenting rare and fascinating performances and vividly communicating the immediacy of the live experience

Opera on 3: Lessons in Love and Violence

Performances & Events

Music: Classical

Lessons in Love and Violence

02/06/2018

BBC Radio 3 - Opera on 3, Lessons in Love and Violence

The premiere of George Benjamin's hotly anticipated new opera Lessons in Love and Violence

In George Benjamin's hotly anticipated opera, Edward II is forced to choose between his lover and his country and so sets off a brutalising and corrupting cycle of violence.

George Benjamin's 2012 Written on Skin was a phenomenal worldwide success, so his latest opera, which once more reunites Benjamin with playwright Martin Crimp and director Katie Mitchell, has been hotly anticipated. 

Lessons in Love and Violence explores the corrupting influence of duty, power and realpolitik on love, loyalty and affection as Edward II is forced to choose between the conflicting demands of statesmanship and his lover, Piers Gaveston. As the court looks on appalled by Gaveston's excesses and his hold over Edward, the famine-ridden country descends into civil war. Violence begets yet more violence as the ensuing power struggle intensifies between the king and his disaffected courtier Mortimer, his queen Isabel and his brutalised young son. George Benjamin himself conducts an international cast. 

Recorded last month at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and presented by Tom Service in conversation with Fiona Maddocks. 

King ..... Stéphane Degout (bartione)
Isabel ..... Barbara Hannigan (soprano)
Gaveston / Stranger ..... Gyula Orendt (baritone)
Mortimer ..... Peter Hoare (tenor)
Boy / Young King ..... Samuel Boden (tenor)
Witness 1 / Singer 1 / Woman 1 ..... Jennifer France (soprano)
Witness 2 / Singer 2 / Woman 2 ..... Krisztina Szabó (mezzo-soprano))
Witness 3 / Madman ..... Andri Björn Róbertsson (bass-baritone)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
George Benjamin (conductor).

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