John Adams Gives Antony and Cleopatra the Operatic Treatment
Celebrated American composer John Adams’s newest opera takes its inspiration from Shakespeare. . Adams talks with host Barbara Bogaev about how he turned a five-act play into a two-act opera—which sce...
12 Sep 202235min
Paterson Joseph: Julius Caesar and Me (Rebroadcast)
This summer marks the tenth anniversary of a landmark production for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Their 2012 Julius Caesar was Britain’s first ever high-profile production of a Shakespeare play with...
16 Aug 202234min
Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the Tabard Inn, with Martha Carlin (Rebroadcast)
What if Shakespeare and his friends had gotten together and carved their names on the wall of an inn made famous by Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales? In 2015, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history p...
2 Aug 202219min
The Robben Island Shakespeare, with David Schalkwyk (Rebroadcast)
While Nelson Mandela was incarcerated on South Africa's Robben Island, one of the other political prisoners, Sonny Venkatrathnam, managed to retain a copy of Shakespeare's complete works. Venkatrathna...
20 Juli 202219min
Peter Brook (Rebroadcast)
Legendary director Peter Brook died last week at the age of 97. Brook was one of theater’s most influential directors. His 1970 A Midsummer Night’s Dream is among that play’s most lauded and best-know...
5 Juli 202238min
Andrea Mays on The Millionaire and the Bard (Rebroadcast)
Henry Clay Folger paid a world record price for a book—not once, but twice—as he became the world's leading collector of Shakespeare First Folios. The Folger Shakespeare Library celebrated its 90th bi...
21 Juni 202228min
Joe Papp and Shakespeare in the Park, with Kenneth Turan (Rebroadcast)
Joe Papp was responsible for some of modern American theater's most iconic institutions: New York City's free Shakespeare in the Park. The Public Theater. The whole idea of "Off-Broadway." We spoke wi...
7 Juni 202235min
Brett Dean and Matthew Jocelyn on Their Hamlet Opera
A new opera version of Hamlet is onstage at New York’s Metropolitan Opera through June 9. Composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn talk with host Barbara Bogaev about adapting the texts of t...
24 Maj 202233min
