Drama on 3: 8 Jan 2017, 9-10pm - Manfred

[french frank]

An adaptation of Byron's poem (which I've never read, but as I have Byron's complete works on my adjacent bookshelf, perhaps it would be a good reason to do so this evening). The strong literary theme continues …

[french frank]

Just listened to this - pretty good production, slightly chopped. I doubt many people today have much sympathy with Byronic poetry, but hardly a reason not to broadcast it. I'm glad to have been acquainted with a work that inspired Schumann and Tchaikovsky.

I recall reading some while ago a review in a student magazine which declared either Andy Kershaw or Late Junction (I can't remember which) 'the only good thing' on Radio 3, and the rest was 'wilfully obscure'. I wonder what he meant by 'wilfully'? I expect he would have put Manfred in that category

[DracoM]

I kept wondering if the Manfred had to be so continually presented as a total neurotic even when he was being carefully analytic? Some OTT acting?

On radio, i think you can be less wild and get the inner core of existential angst home in a more quietly confessional way.

Much of this production IMO sounded very centre stage, foot forward, let them have it.

[french frank]

I kept wondering if the Manfred had to be so continually presented as a total neurotic even when he was being carefully analytic?

Fair enough, it it's how it strikes you. But this is Byron - I don't read Manfred as primarily an intellectual hero: he is half 'mad', isn't he? - his 'introspection' Romantic egotism.

That said, what about this ? I tried it last week and had to give up after a few minutes.

[DracoM]

Crikey.
See what you mean!!

[aeolium]

I caught up with this recently and was somewhat disappointed, finding the heavy over-emphasis of the actor playing Manfred rather wearing. I think the ambition was laudable, and R3 has done several notable productions of verse dramas in the past, such as Goethe's Faust and David Jones' In Parenthesis, but I don't think this particular work stood up to the challenge. There was too little drama in the action, or in the poetic ideas, for me; though Manfred is a somewhat Faustian figure with his powers to command the spirits, there is none of the wit or dialectic that is present in Faust, the spirits themselves are too anaemic and characterless and even the abode of the Death spirits, Ahriman from Persian myth, Nemesis and their servants, is not particularly threatening. Manfred duly finds at the end the oblivion he has been seeking, perhaps joining Astarte the lover he has wronged.

Fair enough to commemorate the bicentenary of Manfred's publication, though if one is looking for 1817 works to commemorate, I would much rather have had an adaptation of Shelley's The Revolt of Islam (first published in 1817 as Laon and Cythna). That does have real drama in action, ideas and verse; it is a mythopoeic portrait of his age as well as being in parts semi-autobiographical. It also in some ways speaks to our own age far more than Byron's poem, though that was indeed influential in the C19: it is a drama of revolution and counter-revolution, of radicalism and oppression, of new ideas of justice and equality. I suppose the title alone would be sufficient to deter the Beeb from having anything to do with it, although the poem is not really anything to do with Islam.

And, even more OT, there is a commemoration of the Russian Revolution by the Welsh Arts Council with a year-long programme of events, including three Russian-themed operas in WNO's autumn season.

[french frank]

R3 has done several notable productions of verse dramas in the past, such as Goethe's Faust and David Jones' In Parenthesis, but I don't think this particular work stood up to the challenge.

I would agree with that. I didn't know the work and wasn't enthused by it. I was still glad to be acquainted with a poem which was so influential in its day (or later).

Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, particularly, and Tennyson's Enoch Arden (with other poems) were works that rose to the radio challenge better, I think. (Plus the two you mentioned)