Main content

Terry Jones introduces the retelling of the fifth tale of The Decameron. Country boy Andreuccio comes to Naples to buy a horse and gets more than he had bargained for.

Terry Jones introduces another tasty Renaissance tale.

The one hundred stories which make up Giovanni Boccaccio's humane and comic masterpiece, come from all over the world.

They are vividly reset by Boccaccio among the flourishing merchant classes in the cities of Renaissance Italy. But their witty, satirical, bawdy voice sounds utterly modern, and their subjects - love, fate, sex, religion, morality - are universal.

Radio 3 is retelling ten of these choice Florentine Fancies, adapted from Boccaccio by Robin Brooks, and introduced by Terry Jones. Like the original, our stories are told over ten days, each of which has its own theme. You can hear them every evening in the Essay, and in omnibus form on Sunday Evenings in Drama on 3.

The music for the series is arranged and performed by Robert Hollingworth, Director of I Fagiolini, and the lutenist Paula Chateauneuf, with translations by Silvia Reseghetti. The script consultant is Guyda Armstrong.

Today's theme is: "Adventures which end in triumph."

Country boy Andreuccio comes to Naples to buy a horse. If only life in Naples were so straightforward.

Giovanni Boccaccio was born to a Florentine banking family in 1313. After an unsuccessful start in law, he turned to his true love: poetry. A humanist and a pupil of Petrarch, Boccaccio's Latin poetry was famous across Europe, and provided the sources for his near-contemporary Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and The Knight's Tale. But his real innovation was the vibrant, vernacular prose in which he wrote The Decameron. Beautifully realised in the teeming voices of merchants and prostitutes, knights and nuns, shopkeepers and conmen, these one hundred stories have become a bedrock of our storytelling tradition, mined ever since by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Moliere, Lope de Vega, Christine de Pizan, Swift, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Caryl Churchill and many more.

Available now

15 minutes

Last on

Fri 12 Dec 2014 22:45

Credits

Role Contributor
Writer Giovanni Boccaccio
Adaptor Robin Brooks
Performer Robert Hollingworth
Performer Paula Chateauneuf
Andreuccio Gunnar Cauthery
Filomena Roslyn Hill
Scarabone Shaun Mason
Neighbour David Acton
Ludo Paul Heath
Bruno Ian Conningham
Sister Lisa Elaine Claxton
Sister Donna Hannah Genesius
Producer Jonquil Panting
Director Jonquil Panting

Broadcast

  • Fri 12 Dec 2014 22:45

Death in Trieste

Death in Trieste

A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.

Watch: My Deaf World

Watch: My Deaf World

Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.

The Book that Changed Me

Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.

Download The Essay

Download The Essay

Download all the episodes from the series and listen at your leisure.

Podcast