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The Food Programme

Food in Opera

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4976 Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2014

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Food in Opera. Sheila Dillon hears the story of food told through 400 years of music history. Gluttonous composers, cuisine centred plotlines and singers needing nourishment.

Renowned opera critic and gourmet traveller, Fred Plotkin holds an event at the Royal Opera House on food in opera. We get to listen in to stories of a sugar addicted Mozart, Pavarotti's post performance meals and find out who gave their name to Pasta Norma.

The interval is spent at Glyndebourne opera speaking with chorus members and prop makers about the travails of eating on stage.

Presented by Sheila Dillon with help from Opera on 3's Christopher Cook. Produced by Emma Weatherill in Bristol.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

0:03.8

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

0:08.6

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

0:15.0

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

0:20.0

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

0:23.7

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

0:28.3

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

0:30.2

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

0:36.1

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

0:39.7

Hello, I'm Sheila Dylan and welcome to this BBC download of the Food Program.

0:45.8

For information on the BBC's terms and conditions of use, visit

0:49.4

W.W. dot B.C. dot co-

0:52.6

UK slash radio four and now enjoy the podcast

1:00.7

A warm welcome to a matinee performance here at the Food Program.

1:05.0

And if you're lukewarm about opera but hot for food, then there's still a feast

1:09.0

before us, three acts in the grand Italian manner of food as the music of operatic love.

1:15.0

No dying falls, but stories to play again of gastronomic delights, dainty dishes set before

1:20.8

a singer, and how the history of food and music so often share a menu.

1:25.0

And when we reach the curtain calls, will you be craving food or opera?

1:30.0

Or as I hope, both.

1:31.0

Well, the orchestra is tuned, the conductor is ready and Sheila Dylan

1:35.3

is on stage for the overture.

...

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