The Ulysses broadcast occurred on Bloomsday 1982 when the Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ Radio, transmitted an uninterrupted 30-hour dramatised radio performance, by 33 actors of the RTÉ Players, of the entire text of James Joyce's epic 1922 novel, Ulysses, to commemorate the centenary of the author's birth (born 2 February 1882). The broadcast was carried by live relay internationally and won a Jacob's Broadcasting Award in recognition of its achievement.
The full 30-hour broadcast was repeated for the first time in 38 years on RTÉ Radio 1 Extra on 16 June 2020, beginning at 8 am. The decision to repeat the broadcast was influenced by the death of Joyce's grandson and literary estate executor, Stephen Joyce, in January 2020 and by the quarantine introduced in Ireland to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
The novel Ulysses contains about 265,000 words from a vocabulary of 30,030 words. This record-breaking and historic live literary broadcast was originally released to the public, after the broadcast, as a recording on 20 audio cassettes in 1982 and later digitally remastered on CD in two formats: as a 32-CD boxed set, and as a three-CD set of MP3 audio files, released in 2004 (OCLC 315482641 and 605276262).
Track listing (MP3 version)
Broadcast personnel (the RTÉ Players)
Narrators
Conor Farrington
Peter Dix
Brendan Cauldwell
Aiden Grennell
Tomas Studley
Deirdre O'Meara
Cast
Leopold Bloom – Ronnie Walsh
Molly Bloom – Pegg Monahan
Stephen Dedalus – Patrick Dawson
Buck Mulligan – Gerry McArdle
Mr. Deasy – Brendan Cauldwell
Myles Crawford – Seamus Forde
Bantam Lyons – Jim Reid
Simon Dedalus – Eamon Keane
Haines – Laurence Foster
Miss Douce – Colette Proctor
Miss Kennedy – Barbara McCaughey
Nosy Flynn – Gerald Fitzmahony
Ben Dollard – Breandán Ó Dúill
Ned Lambert – Denis Staunton
W.B. Murphy – Liam O'Callaghan
Cyril Sargent – Brendan Conroy
Colm – Colm Hefferon
Zoe Higgins – Marcella O'Riordan
Bella Cohen – Eileen Colgan
John Henry Menton – Eoin White
The Nymph – Cathryn Brennan
Virag – Christopher Casson
Old Gummy Granny – Neasa Ní Annracháin
Stephen's Mother – Joan Plunkett
Mrs. Yelverton-Barry – Daphne Carroll
Cissy Caffrey – Kate Minogue
Alf Bergin – Joe Taylor
The Gaffer – Ivan Hanly
Production personnel
Text Consultant – Roland McHugh
Sound Supervision – Marcus Mac Donald
Executive Producer – Micheál Ó hAodha
Director – William Styles
References
External links
Photograph of actors at recording
Ulysses audiobook: the entire recording
The entire recording in 18 parts at RTÉ Culture
Literature albums by Irish artists
Audiobooks by title or series
Live spoken word albums
Bloomsday
RTÉ Radio
Ulysses (novel) Spoken word albums by Irish artists 1980s spoken word albums