Arts & Ideas Folgen

The German Romantic author of horror and fantasy published stories which form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, the ballet Coppélia and the Nutcracker. In the theatre he worked as a stagehand, decorator, playwright and manager and he wrote his own musical works, his opera Undine ended its run at the Berlin Theatre after a fire. But during his lifetime he also saw Warsaw and Berlin occupied by Napoleon and during the Prussian war against France, he wrote an account of his visit to the battlefields and he became entangled in various legal disputes towards the end of his life. Anne McElvoy is joined by:Joanna Neilly Associate Professor and Fellow and Tutor in German at the University of Oxford.Keith Chapin senior lecturer in music at Cardiff University.Tom Smith a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He is Senior Lecturer and Head of German at the University of St Andrews.You can find details about performances of Offenbach's works on the website of the society http://offenbachsociety.org.uk/Producer: Tim Bano

A world of sprites and spirits encountered by childhood sisters in the 1988 animated feature film by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) and Studio Ghibli has become a hit stage adaptation for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The original composer Joe Hisaishi worked with playwright Tom Morton-Smith and Director Phelim McDermott and the production returns to the Barbican this autumn. Chris Harding and guests look at how this story of Totoro relates to Japanese beliefs about ghosts and nature, and how Miyazaki used ideas of childhood innocence to critique post-War Japanese society. Chris Harding is joined by the playwright Tom Morton-Smith, Michael Leader from the podcast Ghiblioteque, Dr Shiro Yoshioka, Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Newcastle, and Dr Xine Yao, co-director of qUCL at University College London, and a Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker.My Neighbour Totoro from the Royal Shakespeare Company in collaboration with Improbable and Nippon TV runs at the Barbican Theatre in London from 23 NovemberMusic from Studio Ghibli films is included in a BBC Prom concert being performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra on Monday August 28th and then available on BBC Sounds.You can find a collection of programmes exploring different facets of Japanese culture on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0657spqProducer: Luke Mulhall

The creator of much-loved children's TV classics including The Clangers, Bagpuss and Pogles' Wood is discussed by Matthew Sweet and his guests: Daniel Postgate who took over Smallfilms from his father, singer Sandra Kerr who was the voice of Madeleine in Bagpuss, composer and author Neil Brand, and writer and broadcaster Samira Ahmed. Oliver Postgate's father was a communist and his mother was a political activist, daughter of prominent Labour figure George Lansbury - how much of this political background can we find in the fantastical worlds that he created? There's also discussion of the music that plays such a major role in the programmes - the deep folk roots of the songs performed by Sandra and John Faulkner in Bagpuss and Vernon Elliot's sparse and poignant compositions for The Clangers, Noggin the Nog and Ivor the Engine.CLANGERS: The Complete Scripts 1969-1974 has been publishedYou can find more Free Thinking/Arts & Ideas discussions of influential TV, film, books and art in a collection on Radio 3's Free Thinking programme website called LandmarksProducer: Torquil MacLeod