Originally Aired:
Sun 17 May 2009
BBC RADIO 3
1 hour 15 minutes
Despite our research team's best efforts, we have been unable to locate the recordings of Mr. Hiddleston reciting the poems in this program. Should you know where they might be obtained, please contact us.
Introduction to the Carnival of the Animals and the Royal March of the Lion by Camille Saint‐Saëns
Performed by London Sinfonietta with Pascal Roge and Christina Ortiz
Conducted by Riccardo Muti
Beppo by Lord Byron
Read by Tom Hiddleston
Kangaroo by Camille Saint‐Saëns
Performed by London Sinfonietta with Pascal Roge and Christina Ortiz Conducted by Riccardo Muti
Beppo by Lord Byron
Read by Tom Hiddleston
Persons with Long Ears by Camille Saint‐Saëns
Performed by London Sinfonietta with Pascal Roge and Christina Ortiz
Conducted by Riccardo Muti
Beppo by Lord Byron
Read by Tom Hiddleston
Pierrot by Robert Schumann
Performed by Vladimir Ashkenaszy
a clown’s smirk in the skull of a baboon by ee cummings
Read by Saskia Reeves
Enthauptung by Arnold Schoenberg
Performed by Castellani, Marc and Staatskapelle Dresden.
extract from Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
Read by Saskia Reeves
I walk on Gilded Splinters by Mac Rebennack
Performed by Dr John
Sa Sa Yea by Mighty Sparrow
Performed by Mighty Sparrow
extract from Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Read by Saskia Reeves
Le Carnaval Romain by Hector Berlioz
Performed by London Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Sir Colin Davis
Moccoli (Translator: W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer) by Goethe
Read by Saskia Reeves
Le Carnaval Romain by Hector Berlioz
Performerd by London Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Sir Colin Davis
The Armadillo by Elizabeth Bishop
Read by Saskia Reeves
Dark Footsteps by Gene Moore
Performed by Gene Moore
from The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe
Read by Tom Hiddleston
from Profane –Sacrilege and Reprise of Dark Footsteps by Gene Moore
Performed by Gene Moore
The Circus Animals’ Desertion by W.B. Yeats
Read by Tom Hiddleston
The Circus Animals’ Desertion
I
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last being but a broken man
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
II
What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his fairy bride.
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
`The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it,
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love
And not those things that they were emblems of.
III
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
Si tum m'ami from Pulcinella by Igor Stravinsky
Performed by Philharmonia Orchestra
The Verdict (Translator: Max Hayward and Stanley Kunitz) by Ann Akhmatova
Read by Saskia Reeves
Intrata from Summer's Last Will and Testament by Constant Lambert
Performed by The Chorus of Opera North, The Leeds Festival Chorus, English Northern Philharmonia
Sunday Night in Santa Rosa by Dana Gioia
Read by Saskia Reeves
Ella e pura aria by Giuseppe Verdi
Performed by Placido Domingo
Conducted by Riccardo Muti