Words and Music

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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

Music: Classical

A journey of discovery, weaving music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

A weekly journey of discovery, weaving together a range of music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

Words and Music: Welcome To Heartbreak

Welcome To Heartbreak

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Zubin Varla and Katie West guide you through the operatic emotions of a broken heart.

Zubin Varla and Katie West guide you through the operatic emotions of a broken heart, reading exquisitely painful poetry from Audre Lorde, Alice Meynell, and Derek Walcott.

There cannot be a phenomenon in all the world that inspires poets and composers more than heartbreak. It is a universal experience, and yet at the same time feels utterly unique.

With Valentine’s Day approaching, why not indulge yourself in expressions of exquisite pain from the likes of Audre Lorde, Alice Meynell, Don Paterson and Derek Walcott, whose words take you through the stages of despair, denial, regret, acceptance and so on. All of it accompanied, of course, by lovelorn, lovesick music courtesy of Leoncavallo, Puccini, Tchaikovsky and Tom Waits.

Living through the operatic emotions of a broken heart alongside you are readers Zubin Varla and Katie West.

Readings: 
Derek Walcott - The Fist
Walt Whitman - Sometimes with One I Love
Elizabeth Smart - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Sean Bonney - In Fear of Memory (after Pasolini)
Elizabeth Smart - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Alice Meynell - Renouncement
Percey Bysshe Shelley - When the Lamp is Broken
Anon - Donal Og (translated by Lady Augusta Gregory)
Don Paterson - A Vow
Pablo Neruda - Sonnet LXV (translated by Stephen Tapscott)
Lynn Emanuel - Frying Trout While Drunk from ‘The Nerve Of It: Poems Selected and New’ (2015). Aired by permission of University Of Pittsburgh Press.
Ernest Dowson - Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
Ovid - Remedia Amoris (translated by Rolfe Humphries)
Kahlil Gibran - On Pain
Edna St. Vincent Millay  - Time does not bring relief
Frank Bidart - Catullus: Excrucior
Frank Bidart - Catullus: Odi et Amo
Frank Bidart - Catullus: Id faciam
Kit Wright - My Version
Christina Rossetti - Mirage
Audre Lorde - Movement Song
Derek Walcott - Love After Love
Louis MacNeice - Autumn Journal: Canto XIX

Produced by Jack Howson.  
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3.

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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