Front Row

Martyn Brabbins, the Music Director of English National Opera, is turning 60 next week and to celebrate he’ll be conducting a new take on Elgar's Enigma Variations at the Royal Albert Hall. He discusses the mystery theme to the original version and the importance of cultural exchange with international musicians.Playmobil: The Movie is the next in the long line of toys-to-screen animated films. Daniel Radcliffe, Anya Taylor-Joy and Meghan Trainor lend their voices to the film where two orphaned children find themselves magically transported into a Playmobil world from their imaginations. BBC Radio 6 Music film critic Rhianna Dhillon reviews.Scribe Paul Antonio discusses historic and contemporary calligraphy - from laws intricately and elegantly written on vellum and signed by the Queen to high-end fashion events - and offers Shahidha some handy tips for the perfect Copperplate script. Presenter Shahidha Bari Producer Jerome Weatherald

Candace Bushnell whose 1996 book Sex and the City was a runaway best seller and adapted into a successful HBO television series and two films, talks to John Wilson about her new memoir Is There Still Sex in The City? - a wry look at sex, dating and friendship in New York City after fifty.We talk to choreographer and Artistic Director of National Dance Company Wales, Fearghus Ó Conchúir, about Rygbi: Annwyl i Mi / Dear to Me, a dance production celebrating rugby in Wales, which he developed alongside professional rugby players. The work premieres at the Welsh National Eisteddfod this week and will travel to the Rugby World Cup in Japan later in the year.Audible has announced a new “captioning” facility, which will allow audiobook listeners to see the words of a text as they are spoken by the narrator. It’s set to start in America in September, but publishers there have reacted furiously, saying the rights to produce an audiobook are entirely separate to the rights to reproduce a text. Nicola Solomon, chief executive of the Society of Authors takes us through a tech development which has startled US publishers. The black actor and singer Paul Robeson – forever associated with Ol’ Man River – is the subject of a new play 8 Hotels at Chichester Festival Theatre. The play’s writer, Nicholas Wright, and its director, Richard Eyre, consider the political controversy surrounding the singer as he toured the US in Othello in the 1940s. Vincent Dowd reports.Presented by John Wilson Produced by Simon Richardson

Toni Morrison, the Nobel prize winning writer whose novels explored black identity in America and in particular the experience of black women, has died aged 88. To pay tribute to the author of Beloved, Stig is joined by the writers Claudia Rankine, Walter Mosley, Ladee Hubbard and literary critic Diane Roberts. Plus Front Row's 2015 interview with Toni Morrison. How do you create the sound of Space in music? Steven Price, who won an Oscar for his score for the film Gravity, and Carly Paradis, whose music includes the theme for The Innocents, talk about the particular demands in writing science fiction music, ahead of a Prom devoted to the music of Space, which also features music by Hans Zimmer. Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Timothy Prosser

The Crucible drew inspiration from the paranoia and fear of McCarthyism - so we find out if a new Scottish Ballet production of Arthur Miller's classic is drawing on our own turbulent political times. Kelly Apter of The Scotsman gives us her verdict. The performance is part of the 2019 Edinburgh International Festival. And two musical takes on The Peterloo Massacre. Folk trio Peter Coe, Brian Peters and Laura Smyth give us a live rendition of a song from their album The Road to Peterloo, which brings together broadside ballads from the time of the massacre. And right up to date Robin Richards, composer and member of the bands Dutch Uncles explain how his new work to mark a bicentenary commemoration of the massacre, From the Crowd, draws on a similar thread of first hand radical testimony. The Reverend Patrick Bronte was ahead of his time, allowing his famous literary daughters to read freely and express their creativity. A new installation at The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth has drawn inspiration from a period he spent in darkness recovering from a major eye operation. Bronte Society Creative Partner Frank Cottrell Boyce has worked with artist Jo Pocock, to illuminate the mundane objects of Rev Patrick Bronte's life to shed light on an underappreciated man. Critic Tim Robey remembers the ground-breaking film-maker D.A. Pennebaker who has died aged 94. He is best known for the Bob Dylan documentary Don't Look Back, the 1973 film that captured David Bowie's final performance as Ziggy Stardust, and The War Room, his fly-on-the-wall look at Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, which earned an Oscar nomination.Presented by John Wilson. Produced by Kev Core

We review the ninth in the Fast & Furious franchise and its first spin-off, Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham as the eponymous duo. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh considers the lasting success of one of the biggest franchises in the history of cinema which has amassed almost $5bn worldwide.The youngest person and first woman to be a principal guest conductor with the BBC Symphony Orchestra is Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska. We speak to her ahead of her Proms debut to ask why Finland produces such a high number of conductors and how she's related to the great Finnish composer Sibelius.Life in the American West in the 18th century is tough - a young man on the run hides among the US Camel Corps, while a woman desperate for water awaits her husband and sons' return to their parched homestead. Orange Prize for Fiction winner, Téa Obreht discusses her second novel, Inland.Recorded sounds from the blanket bogs of Caithness and Sutherland’s Flow Country are the main inspiration of Kathy Hinde's new sound installation. It's one of five works at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh celebrating this habitat which could be crucial in the fight against climate change.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Hilary Dunn

k.d. lang, who has been revisiting and touring her best-selling 1992 album Ingénue, talks about its significance in terms of LGBT rights, her coming out during its promotion, and why she feels now is the time to retire from music: “The muse is eluding me. I am completely at peace with the fact that I may be done”. As three works by Peter Lanyon, one of the most important postwar British painters, have been acquired for the nation in lieu of £900,000 inheritance tax, we discuss how the scheme works, what cultural artefacts are involved and the impact on the public, with lawyer Mark Stephens and Robert Upstone, a member the panel that decides which works are eligible.Kenyan-born Magdalene Odundo discusses her new exhibition The Journey of Things at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich which features 50 of her own works alongside international artworks from the last 3,000 years which have inspired the design of her ceramic vessels.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Harry Parker

Olivier Latry has been the Organist of Notre-Dame de Paris since 1985, is about to play the Royal Albert Hall organ at the Proms. He talks about his talent for improvisation, his feelings about the fire that nearly devastated Notre Dame, and how he thinks the cathedral should be rebuilt. Gurinder Chadha, director of Bend It Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice, discusses her latest film, Blinded by the Light. Based on Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir Greetings from Bury Park, it is a coming of age drama set in 1980s Luton where a teenager of Pakistani origin uses the inspiration of Bruce Springsteen songs to help him challenge the traditional values of his family.Rupert Everett’s first foray into directing for the stage is a new production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Everett also takes on the eponymous role of the disillusioned country gentleman, in this adaptation by David Hare for the Theatre Royal Bath. Dominic Cavendish reviews.Presenter Samira Ahmed Producer Jerome Weatherald

This week sees the 200th anniversary of the birth of Herman Melville, writer of one of America's greatest novels, Moby Dick. Sarah Churchwell and Richard King discuss the extraordinary tale of Captain Ahab's pursuit of the white sperm whale that had bitten off his leg. The story of Ahab's revenge is famously narrated by Ishmael, who is on his first whaling expedition, with one of literature's most celebrated opening lines : Call me Ishmael. Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins is reunited with Chris Pine in new TV drama I Am the Night. Set in 1950s America it follows the true story of Fauna Hodel, a young woman in search of her biological family after discovering she’s adopted and not mixed race as she’d been told, but white. Both Fauna, and a down-and-out reporter played by Pine, end up on the trail of famous gynaecologist, Dr. George Hodel who's somehow connected to the gruesome Black Dahlia murder.Is there something to be said for Luddism? The machine-wrecking rebels of the Industrial Revolution are the subject of a new play There is a Light that Never Goes Out: Scenes from the Luddite Rebellion at the Manchester Royal Exchange. Rather than casting The Luddites as history's losers, fighting a doomed battle against the march of progress, it asks whether they were in fact pioneers who paved the way for workers' rights and the welfare state. The creative team James Yeatman and and Lauren Mooney take us through the historic parallels which suggests we too might consider resisting the rise of the machines. Plus, music journalist Neil McCormick reports on the US court ruling that Katy Perry copied Dark Horse from Christian rapper Flame.Presenter : Stig Abell Producer : Dymphna Flynn

American opera singer, Tamara Wilson withdrew from her final ever performance of Aida at the weekend. She was scheduled to be conducted by Placido Domingo at the Arena Di Verona but announced on Instagram that her absence was due to illness. But it comes after her public opposition to the use of ‘blackface’ for the role - heavy "chocolate brown" make-up. Tamara speaks out about the incident and why she feels the industry and Aida needs to change.New Zealand writer Fiona Kidman discusses her new novel This Mortal Boy, based on the true story of a young Northern Irishman, Albert Black, who emigrated to Wellington in 1953 to seek work. Just two years later at the age of 20 he was facing the prospect of execution by hanging after an incident in a café that led him to be described as the ‘Jukebox Killer’.Some people just dread Shakespeare; they never 'bond' with him. Sean Allsop has always felt alienated by The Bard whilst simultaneously feeling that maybe he is missing out. So we sent him along to the home of authentic Shakespeare productions - London's Globe Theatre - to ask the experts and find out how a novice should approach Shakespeare for the first time with a production of Henry IV part 1.Kinetic art pioneer Carlos Cruz-Diez has died in Paris at the age of 95Presenter: Samira Ahmed, Producer: Oliver Jones

Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans, starring Kim Cattrell as Agrippina and Craig Roberts as Emperor Nero, is the first foray into cinema of the popular children’s TV series. Classics author Natalie Haynes gives her verdict. On the 400th anniversary of her birth, we assess the life and work of Venetian composer Barbara Strozzi with Professor Susan Wollenberg and mezzo-soprano CN Lester; who will also perform an excerpt of Strozzi’s work alongside harpist Alison Henry.Playwright and author Barney Norris talks about his latest novel The Vanishing Hours, in which two strangers meet by chance in a bar in a quiet English town, and share their stories. Protest pieces by global activist group Extinction Rebellion have been added to the V&A’s Rapid Response Collecting Gallery. Senior Curator, Corinna Gardner, discusses the cultural importance and impact of the items.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Ben Mitchell