Gold diggers or lambs to the slaughter? Saints or sinners? In the final programme of this three-part series, opera director Michael McCaffery looks at some of opera’s most celebrated courtesans.
We’ll visit 17th century Venice, the Paris of the Belle Époque, to Freud’s Vienna and Brecht’s Berlin to look at the stories, societies and real life tragedies behind some of opera’s best-loved bad girls.
With extracts from Salome by Richard Strauss, Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner, Lulu by Alban Berg, Manon Lescaut by Puccini and Auber and Driegroschenoper by Weill.
(First broadcast: July 2007)