Episode description

Luxury and Power is the title of a new British Museum exhibition focusing on the politics of display used by rulers in Persia and Greece. Ahead of the coronation, Anne McElvoy hears from the curator, from academics researching past royal rituals in Tudor and Medieval England and about power and royalty on the operatic stage from Verdi's Don Carlos and Aida and to Philip Glass's Akhnaten and Britten's Gloriana.

Dr Jamie Fraser is curator for the Ancient Levant and Anatolia at the British Museum and has curated Luxury and power: Persia to Greece

Dr Joanne Paul is a writer, historian and broadcaster working on the history of the Renaissance, Tudor and Early Modern Periods.

Professor Sarah Hibberd is Stanley Hugh Badock Chair of Music at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on nineteenth century opera and music theatre in Paris and London.

Dr Julia Hartley is a BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker who writes about Dante, Proust and representations of Iran. She lectures at the University of Glasgow School of Modern Languages and Cultures.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Luxury and power: Persia to Greece runs at the British Museum in London from 4 May 2023 - 13 Aug 2023 On BBC Radio 3 you can find a discussion about recordings of Coronation Anthems on Building a Library, part of Record Review and music by Royal composers featured on In Tune and Radio 3 is broadcasting the music commissioned for the coronation before the ceremony begins. You can find that on BBC Sounds

Music:

Meyerbeer, Le Prophète, The Coronation March, London Symphony Orchestra, Richard Bonynge, Decca – SXL.6541

Verdi, Don Carlos, Act II, Cejour heureux est plein d’allgègresse! Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Claudia Abbado, Deutsche Grammophon – DEF058231107