Lorca's Rural Trilogy [Drama On 3]

Episodes

EpisodeTitleFirst
Broadcast
RepeatedComments
01The House Of Bernarda Alba2014030220160918 (R3)Federico Garcia Lorca's final play.

Translation by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata

Following the death of her second husband Bernarda Alba, a tyrannical matriarch, rules over her house and daughters, imposing an eight-year period of mourning.

Federico Garcia Lorca (1898 - 1936) is, with Cervantes, the best known figure in Spanish literature. Written in 1936 and completed just a few months before his execution, The House of Bernarda Alba is Lorca's final tragedy

Male chorus singers - Les Pratt, Martin Medina, Nathan Jenkins, Andrew Johnston, David Cane, Peter Edge, George Leeming.

Musical direction and original music composition by Conrad Nelson

There lived Dona Bernarda, a very old widow who kept an inexorable and tyrannical watch over her unmarried daughters. They were prisoners deprived of free will... I saw them pass like shadows, always silent, and always dressed in black. It was a silent and cold hell in the African sun, a tomb for the living under the harsh rule of a dark jailer.' - Lorca's description of a childhood memory which inspired the play.

Lorca's final play. A tyrannical matriarch imposes eight years' mourning on her daughters.

02Yerma2010092620140309 (R3)Yerma by Federico Garcia Lorca

in a translation by Michael Dewell and Carmen Zapata

The tragic tale of a woman's desperate yearning for a child that leads her to murder. Infused with poetic imagery and song this is one of Lorca's best known plays, written in 1934.

Federico Garcia Lorca (1898 - 1936) is, with Cervantes, the best known figure in Spanish literature. His plays Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba are often referred to as a 'rural trilogy' and all three are being broadcast together on Radio 3 in March 2014.

Singers, Members of the cast and Leslie Pratt

Directed by Pauline Harris.

Lorca's classic tale of a woman's desperate yearning for a child that leads to murder.

03Blood Wedding2007112520080713 (R3)
20140316 (R3)
An atmospheric re-working by Ted Hughes of Lorca's evocative meditation on fate, war, tradition, passion and repression. Inspired by the true story of a fatal feud between two families in the Almeria province, high in the mountains of rural Spain.

The third play in Radio 3's broadcast of Federico Garc퀀a Lorca's 'Rural Trilogy' from 1930s Spain. This production of Blood Wedding was first broadcast in 2008 and won the Sony Award for best drama that year.

Lorca's classic drama of passion and repression in an atmospheric re-working by Ted Hughes