HPR0869: The Count of Monte Cristo

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Today we're going back in time, to a classic audio drama performance by the Mercury Theater and was originally aired in Aug 29, 1938. It is an adaptation of the classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas.

Mercury Theatre

The Mercury Theatre was a theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and John Houseman. After a string of live theatrical productions, in 1938 the Mercury Theatre progressed into their best-known period as The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio series that included one of the most notable and infamous radio broadcasts of all time, The War of the Worlds, broadcast on October 30, 1938. The Mercury Theatre on the Air produced live radio dramas in 1938-1940 and again briefly in 1946.

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas's most popular work. He completed the work in 1844. Like many of his novels, it is expanded from the plot outlines suggested by his collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet.

The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean and the Levant during the historical events of 1815–1838 (from just before the Hundred Days through to the reign of Louis-Philippe of France). The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. An adventure story primarily concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy and forgiveness, it tells of a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes from jail, acquires a fortune and sets about getting revenge on the men who destroyed his life. However, his plans also have devastating consequences for the innocent as well as the guilty. The book is considered a literary classic today. According to Luc Sante, "The Count of Monte Cristo has become a fixture of Western civilization's literature, as inescapable and immediately identifiable as Mickey Mouse, Noah's flood, and the story of Little Red Riding Hood."

links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo
https://librivox.org/the-count-of-monte-cristo-by-alexandre-dumas/
https://www.archive.org/details/count_monte_cristo_0711_librivox
https://www.archive.org/details/worksofalexand02duma

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Theatre
https://www.archive.org/details/OrsonWelles-MercuryTheater-1938Recordings
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Todays show is licensed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 , while most of the show notes are taken from Wikipedia and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

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