Free Thinking

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The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Kingship and ceremony

Kingship and ceremony

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Kingship and ceremony

Anne McElvoy looks at royalty, pomp and glory in opera, ancient Persia and Tudor England.

A British Museum exhibition focuses on the splendour and luxury embraced by rulers in Persia and Greece. Ahead of the coronation, Anne McElvoy hears about research on royal rituals.

Luxury and Power is the title of a new British Museum exhibition focusing on the politics of display used by rulers in Persia and Greece. Ahead of the coronation, Anne McElvoy hears from the curator, from academics researching past royal rituals in Tudor and Medieval England and about power and royalty on the operatic stage from Verdi's Don Carlos and Aida and to Philip Glass's Akhnaten and Britten's Gloriana. 

Dr Jamie Fraser is curator for the Ancient Levant and Anatolia at the British Museum and has curated Luxury and power: Persia to Greece

Dr Joanne Paul is a writer, historian and broadcaster working on the history of the Renaissance, Tudor and Early Modern Periods.

Professor Sarah Hibberd is Stanley Hugh Badock Chair of Music at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on nineteenth century opera and music theatre in Paris and London.

Dr Julia Hartley is a BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker who writes about Dante, Proust and representations of Iran. She lectures at the University of Glasgow School of Modern Languages and Cultures. 

Producer: Ruth Watts 

Luxury and power: Persia to Greece runs at the British Museum in London from 4 May 2023 - 13 Aug 2023
On BBC Radio 3 you can find a discussion about recordings of Coronation Anthems on Building a Library, part of Record Review and music by Royal composers featured on In Tune.

Music: 

Meyerbeer, Le Prophète, The Coronation March, 
London Symphony Orchestra, Richard Bonynge, Decca – SXL.6541

Verdi, Don Carlos, Act II, Cejour heureux est plein d’allgègresse!
Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Claudia Abbado, Deutsche Grammophon – DEF058231107

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