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Prom 02 - My Fair Lady

Another chance to hear a Prom in which the John Wilson Orchestra performs Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady. Anthony Andrews plays Professor Higgins and Annalene Beechey Eliza.

Afternoon on 3 with Penny Gore.
Lerner and Loewe's classic Broadway musical 'My Fair Lady' - a second chance to hear last Saturday's Prom performance from the Royal Albert Hall introduced by Petroc Trelawny.

Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phoneticist, so that she may pass as a well-born lady in Lerner and Loewe's classic Broadway musical 'My Fair Lady' performed complete by the John Wilson Orchestra.

Anthony Andrews as Professor Henry Higgins and Annalene Beechey as Eliza Doolittle lead an all-star cast in the John Wilson Orchestra's first ever recreation of a complete musical. As conductor John Wilson says "this really is the perfect light opera, flawless in its construction, book, lyrics, the way the songs weave in and out of, and develop the narrative - it's a joy." Although a Broadway classic it's also the archetypal London show with its roots in George Bernard Shaw's 'Pygmalion' and so it fits neatly into the London theme running through this year's Proms. For this semi-staged performance, Wilson has dusted down the orchestrations for the 1964 film version of the work, rather than the original stage orchestration, to let the full-bodied sound of an orchestra of 70 fill the Royal Albert Hall in what promises to be one of the highlights of the season.

Lerner & Loewe: My Fair Lady.

Anthony Andrews (Professor Henry Higgins)
Annalene Beechey (Eliza Doolittle)
Alun Armstrong (Doolittle)
James Fleet (Colonel Pickering)
Sian Phillips (Mrs Higgins)
Jenny Galloway (Mrs Pearce)
Julian Ovenden (Freddie)

John Wilson Orchestra
John Wilson (Conductor)

Shaun Kerrison (Stage director).

3 hours

Broadcast

  • Tue 17 Jul 2012 14:00