Salford born actor Christopher Ecclestone is to play Oedipus in Radio Three’s forthcoming Anthony Burgess season.
The season marks the start of the station’s celebrations of the centenary of the Manchester writer’s birth.
A Radio Three season will even characteristic essays from eminent writers concerning the A Clockwork Orange author’s work.
The actor stated he was “honoured and proud” to take the lead position in Burgess’s “sensible and daring” model of Sophocles’s tragedy.
Burgess’s adaptation of Oedipus the King was first carried out on stage within the US in 1972, with music from Grammy-winning composer Stanley Silverman.This adaptation will be carried out by the BBC Philharmonic and Manchester Chamber Choir.
“The celebration of Anthony Burgess in his centenary yr types a part of BBC Radio three’s 70th anniversary, as a part of our mission to attach audiences with exceptional music and tradition,” the station’s controller Alan Davey stated.
“Having one of many UK’s main actors, Christopher Eccleston, taking part in the title position within the UK premiere of Burgess’ Oedipus the King will probably be a deal with for us all.”
Burgess, whois identified for his dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange, which was tailored into the controversial 1971 movie directed by Stanley Kubrick, was born in February 1917.
He moved to Moss Side at the age of seven, having lived above a pub in Miles Plating that his mother kept and was educated at the Xavarian Catholic College.
