Italian Fantasy
Sunday 6 July 2008 23:30-1:00 (Radio 3)
A sequence of poetry, prose and music inspired by travellers to Italy.
Actors Emily Bruni and Benedict Cumberbatch read poetry, including works by Byron, arch-Italophile Robert Browning and EE Cummings, who depicts numberless hordes of tourists to Italy clutching cameras. With prose from Henry James, explaining Wordsworth's enthusiasm for a particular Italian pine tree, cookery writer Elizabeth David on white truffles and American writer Eleanor Clark, who found the fountains of Rome surprisingly shocking.
The music includes Berlioz's Harold in Italy inspired by Byron, Bob Dylan's When I paint my masterpiece, Respighi's depictions of the pines and fountains of Rome and the vocal sound of the Italian trallalero team Vagabondo.
Duration:
1 hour 30 minutes
Italian Fantasy
Emily Bruni (reader)
Benedict Cumberbatch (reader)
Producer's Note
A beaker full of the warm South tonight, as yearned for by Keats, and as unforgettably experienced by many a visitor to Italy from the cold north. A glass of Chianti would be the ideal accompaniment to this "Italian Fantasy" which blends the reminiscences of English-speaking travellers and the music of Italy, both authentic and as imagined by visiting composers.
It's a series of snapshots, of "light older than wine" , solitary pines which whisper of pre-Christian conspiracies, of gaudy baroque fountains which , on closer inspection, may not be at all suitable for the polite visitor, of food, sea, castles and ruins. And of course there are the tourists, the great hordes of "substantial dollar-bringing virgins" as memorably sketched by e.e.cummings, with their "Baedekers, Mothers and Kodaks."
We hear from the earlier tourists of the age of Byron and Shelley, awed by the ruins of Rome and Pompeii. And from Mark Twain, perhaps rather less awed at Pompeii and more concerned with the realities of life and taxes before the eruption. If Twain had made his visit a few years later he would have been able to ride up Vesuvius on the new funicular railway so famously celebrated in song.
Robert Browning, that great Italophile, describes a windswept feast after wine making, and who else but Elizabeth David to mouth wateringly describe the famous white truffles of Alba.
Music includes Berlioz' "Harold in Italy" which was inspired by Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", and the Byronic Bob Dylan is also inspired by Rome. Thomas Hardy, rather unexpectedly, describes hearing a Strauss waltz while on the Palatine. There is music from Respighi, his famous descriptions of the pines and fountains of Rome , as well as one of his Ancient Airs and Dances at the end, the original renaissance version of which is heard earlier in the programme on the lute. The impressionistic music of Debussy follows the impressionistic verse of Gabrielle D'Annunzio, Sir John Betjeman is heard reading (to music) his own gentle parody of Longfellow's verse and.we hear from an Italian "Trallalero" team, a traditional form of singing from Liguria, performed while standing in a circle.
We end with the great Italian poet Leopardi and his hymn to the power of the imagination, "L'infinito".
So conjure up the Italy of your imagination - no Baedeker required.
Elizabeth Funning (producer)
Playlist
00.00.00
Mendelssohn : Venetian Gondola Song op 30 no 6 in F sharp minor
Florian Uhlig : piano
Black Box BBM1054
Track 7
00.00.13
Derek Walcott
In Italy
Read by Benedict Cumberbatch
00.03.11
Eleanor Clark
"Fountains" from "Rome and a Villa"
Read by Emily Bruni
00.03.16
Respighi
La fontana del Tritone al mattino
Fountains of Rome
Philadelphia Orchestra
Riccardo Muti
EMI CDC7473162
Track 6
00.07.41
Liszt
Les jeux d'eaux a la Villa d'Este
Zoltan Kocsis : piano
Philips 4201742
Track 4
00.09.38
Richard Wilbur
A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra
Read by Benedict Cumberbatch
00.15.24
Shelley
At Pompeii (From "Ode to Naples")
Read by Emily Bruni
00.15.30
Monteverdi
Duo Seraphim (from Vespro della Beata Virgine)
Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Natalia Shakhovskaia : cellos
RCA 74321843552
Track 1
00.17.58
Mark Twain
The Buried City of Pompeii (from Innocents Abroad)
Read by Benedict Cumberbatch
00.20.55
Luigi Denza : Funiculi, funicular
Giuseppi di Stefano : tenor
Orchestra conducted by G.M. Guarino
HMV 5 74366 2
Track 1
00.23.10
Berlioz
Pilgrims Marche from "Harold in Italy"
Tabea Zimmermann : viola
LSO
Sir Colin Davies
LSO 0040
Track 2
00.27.06
Byron
From Canto IV of "Childe Harold's Pilgimage"
Read by Emily Bruni
00.31.03
Bob Dylan
When I paint my masterpiece
Columbia 4678512 2
CD 2
Track 9
00.33.24
Thomas Hardy
Rome : On the Palatine
Read by Benedict Cumberbatch
00.33.52
Johann Strauss I
Walzer a la Paganini, op 11
Vienna Philharmoni
Lorin Maazel
RCA 09026 63983 2
Track 8
00.35.13
Trad : Qui si formano I bei concerti
Gruppo Spontaneo Trallalero
Felmay fy 8129
Track 1
00.37.23
Trad : Tarantelle Lucane
Musicanti del Piccolo BOrgo
Radici Music RMR 118
Tr 2
00.38.50
Robert Browning
From "The Englishman in Italy"
Read by Benedict Cumberbatch
00.40.37
Dave Heath : Sirocco (3rd movt)
Ittai Shapira : violin
John Anderson : oboe
English Chamber Orchestra
Dave Heath
Black Box BBM 1083
Track 3
00.42.00
Elizabeth David
Tartufi Bianchi from "Italian Food"
Read by Emily Bruni
00.44.11
Rossini : La Danza
Nicolai Gedda : tenor
Graunke Symphony Orchestra
Willy Mattes
HMV 5 74366 2
Track 8
00.47.21
Anon : Italiana/ La Cesarina
Paul O'Dette : lute
Helios CDH 55146
Track 15
00.49.40
Gabrielle D'Annunzio
From "La pioggia nel pineto" (Rain in the Pine Wood)
(The poet listens to the rain falling on the different trees and plants of the forest, and he and his love Hermione are immersed in the spirit of the damp woodland.)
Read by Emily Bruni
00.50.41
Debussy : Les collines d'Anacapri
From Preludes, Book 1
Pascal Roge : piano
Onyx 4004
Track 5
00.53.35
Henry James
from "Italian Hours" 1873. Villa Mellini.
Read by Benedict Cumberbatch
00.55.35
Respighi
The Pines of the Janiculum from "The Pines of Rome"
BBC NOW
Tadaaki Otaka
Warner 2564 61954 2
Track 3
00.55.56
Wordsworth
The Pine of Monte Mario at Rome
Read by Emily Bruni
01.01.42
Peter Porter
The Pines of Rome
Read by Benedict Cumberbatch
01.03.11
Betjeman : Longfellow's Visit to Venice
Read by Sir John Betjeman
Music by Jim Parker
Virgin VCCCD19
Track 8
01.07.12
Cole Porter : "We Open in Venice" from "Kiss Me, Kate"
Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, Ann Miller, Tommy Rall
CBS AK46196
Track 7
01.08.58
Willian Dean Howells
"The Coliseum", from "Italian Journeys" 1867
Read by Emily Bruni
01.10.14
e.e.cummings
memorabilia
Read by Benedict Cumberbatch
01.11.54
Perez Prado ed Southern : "Why Wait" (La Dolce Vita)
Original Soundtrack
CAM CSE009
Track 11
01.14.22
Mendelssohn : Symphony no 4 in A major "Italian". 3rd movement.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Jaime Laredo
Nimbus NI 5067
Track 7
01.27.32
Robert Browing
"Italy of the South" from "De Gustibus"
Read by Benedict Cumberbatch
01.22.34
Johann Joseph Abert
Chant de la Gondoliere
Florian Uhlig : piano
Black Boc BBM 1054
Track 2
01.24.10
Count Giacomo Leopardi : L'infinito
(The poet, on a solitary hill, the view obscured by a familiar hedge, dreams of unbounded spaces, embracing eternity and losing himself in its vast sea.)
Read by Emily Bruni
01.27.09
Respighi : "Italiana" from "Ancient Airs and Dances" Suite no 3
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Sir Neville Marriner
