Hi, this is Christiana Hale, author of Deeper Heaven, a reader's guide to C.S. Lewis's Ransom

Trilogy. You're listening to Pines with Jack.

I think the libretto is just stunningly good. It brought tears to my eyes in places. It will be

terrific. I very heartily congratulate you. This is Pints

with Jack, season six, episode 30, Perilandra, the Opera. After Hours with Professor

Judith Wolfe and John Marr. Welcome everyone. Here on Pints for Jack, we are reading our way through the works of

C.S. Lewis. And this season, we read through Out of the Silent Planet, and we will be getting to its

sequel, Perilandra, in the not too distant future. But I thought it would be a good time to have an episode on

Perilandra. Not the book, but The Opera. And that's what's being described in today's opening

quotation, which comes from a letter written by C.S. Lewis. Now, I first discovered the existence

of Perilandra the Opera when I was in Oxford a few years ago.

I was visiting the Oxford Oratory with my then girlfriend, Marie, and we were looking through their G.K. Chesterton collection, since at the time they had all of his books and many of his personal effects.

But in the library, there were a few boxes in the corner, and I wandered over to them and

started looking through them.

And in one of them, I came across a flyer for the opera.

And I was curious, and I asked a couple of people about it, but I didn't do much more.

But then last season, Dr. Don W. King mentioned it again, and that set me on a journey

to find out more. And so in today's episode, we're going to find out more about this opera.

We're going to look at its history, the different productions of it, and we're also going to

listen to some of its music and discuss it. And in order to do this, I'm going to need not just one, but two guests,

Judith Wolfe and John Marr. So, first of all, Professor Judith Wolfe, she holds a BA in English

literature and interdisciplinary honours studies from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,

...