Drama on 3: Don Juan

Original version

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

Don Juan

BBC Radio 3 - Drama on 3, Don Juan

The amazing adventures of young Don Juan: comedy, tragedy and sexual intrigue.

Don Juan’s amazing adventures, from the bedroom of a lady of Seville to the sultan’s harem, in a whirl of romance, satire and wit on a rollercoaster of sex and violence.

Don Juan
by Lord Byron
Adapted by Robin Brooks


Byron’s masterpiece, Don Juan, depicts young Juan’s amazing adventures as an innocent abroad, moving swiftly from the bedroom of a lady of Seville to a love island in the Cyclades, to the harem of the sultan, in a headlong whirl of sexual intrigue, romance and slavery, making a rollercoaster entertainment of comedy, tragedy and everything between.

Byron reverses the role of Juan, and instead of the heartless rake, we have a hapless young innocent, more seduced than seducer. The business is often romantic, sometimes highly erotic, sometimes comic, and sometimes – in a quite uniquely Byronic mix - all three.  

The story opens with young Juan’s seduction, at the hands of a “chaste” married lady. After the high farce of their exposure, Juan undergoes exile and shipwreck, until he is washed up on a Grecian Isle, where he is nursed by the lovely young nymph Haidée, until the two of them fall passionately in love. We see this idyll destroyed by the return of Haidée’s father, the pirate king Lambro, who sells Juan into slavery. In the slave market at Constantinople, we enjoy Juan’s discomfiture as he is led off by the eunuch in the service of a mystery buyer, forced to dress in women’s clothes, and delivered in secret to sate the appetite of a spoilt and predatory Sultana, now the only man in the harem.

Byron narrates the story of his poem in his own voice, so we frame the poem with material taken from his life and letters, to illuminate the events and passions of his life which lie behind the joys and sorrows of his comic epic.

Adapted for Drama on 3 by Robin Brooks who also  introduces the drama.

Byron.....Edward Bennett
Mephistopheles…..Julian Bleach
Don Juan.....Matthew Tennyson
Donna Julia.....Pippa Nixon
Haidée.....Dolores Carbonari
Gulbeyaz.....Keziah Joseph
Donna Inez.....Kate Paul
Don Alfonso/Johnson/Fletcher.....Nicholas Murchie
Lambro/Sultan/Crony.....Mark Spalding
Baba, a Eunuch.....Cyril Nri
Antonia / Lolah.....Bettrys Jones
Zoe.....Harmony Rose Bremner
Mother of the Maids.....Barbara Dryhurst
Katinka.....Alexandra Ewing  
Dudu.....Kate Morgan Jones
Pedro / Crony /Diner/ Slaver.....Charlie Layburn
Margarita.....Eleanor Tata


Director / Producer     Fiona McAlpine
Sound Design     Alisdair McGregor

An Allegra Production for BBC Radio 3

Picture credit : The Finding of Don Juan by Haidée by Ford Madox Brown.
 
Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust, licensed under CCO

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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Drama on 3

Don Juan

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3