A play presented to international acclaim in 1969.
Transformed into a mind-blowing TV miniseries in 1974.
Broadcast once, in 1975, and never shown again.
I saw it on the telly as a kid – and it’s the sort of thing that makes me think I was damn lucky. No frigging talent shows, when I was a kid!
But let’s proceed with order.

The Orlando furioso (literally, “Raging Roland”) is a classic of Italian literature – a lengthy, intricate, colorful adventure poem in 46 cantos, first published in 1516 by Ludovico Ariosto (the guy you see portrayed here on the left).
The plot is almost impossible to summarize: during the war between Christians and Saracens, in the time of Charlemagne, a host of characters from both sides cross paths, fighting or falling in love (or indeed, fighting and falling in love). Roland, the bravest champion in Charlemagne’s army, falls in love with a “heathen” and loses his mind. Angelica, the most beautiful Christian woman, makes a runner. Both fronts are in disarray. Strange magic is afoot. Monsters roam the landscape.
Many shenanigans ensue.

The Orlando furioso inspired a lot of later works, including Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing takes its central plot from a single episode in the Ariosto work.
Fantasy fans are familiar with some of the elements of the story as it was used by Fletcher Pratt and Lyon Sprague de Camp for The Castle of Iron, one of their Harold Shea stories.
It can be easily said that, apart from being one of the most influential works in Western literature, the Orlando furioso is also a seminal text of fantasy literature – so much so that Lin carter reprinted it in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. Continue reading →