THE MAGIC OF THE MUSICAL — Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 19th @2pm Pacific/slt. This Month: “Ghost­ly & Spooky: The Haunt­ing Side of Gilbert & Sullivan”

Also on the air today: tune in at 12 noon or 4pm SLT for the lat­est edi­tion of “Where Have You Been?”. Plus “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, every four hours from 4am. Fea­tured Music today will, of course, be “On Broadway!”.

TUNE IN  at main.vcradio.org, or “Play Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio” on your smart speaker*!
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This Month: Ghost­ly & Spooky: The Haunt­ing Side of Gilbert & Sullivan

The Vic­to­ri­an Era saw a unique, and unex­pect­ed cause and effect that was the result of two dif­fer­ent move­ments. On one hand the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion brought sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and tech­nol­o­gy to the fore­front with hereto­fore unprece­dent­ed lev­els of inno­va­tion.  At the same time there was a rise of Spir­i­tu­al­ism, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of medi­ums and seances, and a desire to under­stand or con­nect with the unseen.

Enter Gilbert and Sul­li­van, the great satirists of the Vic­to­ri­an era. Today we’ll focus on three of their works which touch on fan­ta­sy and the super­nat­ur­al in dif­fer­ent ways. In Iolan­the, The Sor­cer­er, and Rud­dig­ore  Cale­do­nia Sky­tow­er and guest Elrik Mer­lin will explore how the belief in faeries, mag­i­cal potions, and ghost­ly curs­es were used in these shows. This pro­gramme was record­ed last year in the Gold Hall at Angel Manor before a live audience.

The Mag­ic of The Musi­cal explores the blend­ing of music and dra­ma — fea­tur­ing the songs, his­to­ry, and lore that make up the musi­cal the­ater canon. Learn more about some of your favorite shows and com­posers as we cue the orches­tra, and the over­ture begins.

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Enjoy these videos, cho­sen to sup­port today’s episode:

The Night­mare Song, Eng­lish Nation­al Opera, Gilbert & Sul­li­van’s “Iolan­the”  (2018)

Clive Revill as John Welling­ton Wells in “The Sor­cer­er” (1982)

“Sprites of Earth and Air” with Clive Revill in “The Sor­cer­er” (1982)

Vin­cent Price as Sir Despard Mur­ga­troyd in “Rud­dig­ore” (1983)

Learn more about Vic­to­ri­an Spir­i­tu­al­ism at victorianweb.org