An opera in three acts by WAGNER
OPENING NIGHT OF THE 1961
Bayreuth Festival
CHORUS and ORCHESTRA OF THE BAYREUTHFESTIVAL
Chorus-Master, Wilhelm Pitz
Conductor, WOLFGANG SAWALUSCH
Producer, Wieliand Wagner
The action takes place in Thuringia at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
ACT I
Scene 1: The interior of the Venusberg Scene 2: The valley in front of the Wartburg
Relayed from Bayreuth by courtesy of Bayerischer Rundfunk

A conversational fragment by T. S. GREGORY
An important question in the 'eighties as it might have been discussed by Anatole France with the Master of Balliol and two eminent colleagues. The imagined scene is the Master's Lodging, Balliol College, 1887.
Henry Edward Cardinal Manning Ernest Milton
Produced by Christopher Holme

Act 2:
The Hall of Song in the Wartburg

by LORD BYRON
Read by Stephen Murray
The Fourth Canto of Childe Harold , from which this reading is drawn, deals with Byron's impressions of Italy. Arranged by D. G. Brideon
: second broadcast followed by an interlude at 8.15 app.

Acr 3: The valley in front of the Wartburg

1912-1922
A critical miscellany arranged and introduced by George MacBeth
Including poetry and criticism by LasceMes Abercrombie
Gordon Bottomley. Rupert Brooke W. H. Davies , Walter de la Mare T. S. Eliot , James Elroy Flecker Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
Sir Edmund Gosse. Geoffrey Grigson Fredegond Shove , Philip Larkin Edward Marsh , John Masefield
Wilfred Owen , Francis Brett Young
Read by Hugh Dickson , Gary Watson and Alan Wheatley
Mr. MacBeth believes that the time is ripe for a hard look at the traditional rejection of Georgian poetry as a body of insipid and outmoded work. He tries to unearth the main guiding myths of the Georgians and to assess how far these were modified by the cathartic experience of the Great War.

Josef Suk (violin)
Jan Panenka (piano)
Sonata (Debussy) Sonata (Janacek) on a gramophone record