The Ulysses broadcast began on 16 June 1982 (Bloomsday) 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).[1] The broadcast began at 6.30 am and continued until midday the next day. It was carried by live relay internationally,[2][3] and it won a Jacob's Broadcasting Award in recognition of its achievement.
Writing in The Spectator, John Phipps said, "I can't praise it enough. It is a masterpiece, a rare, enduring example of radio drama as art" and "The RTÉ players give performances of great clarity and insight."[2]
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 transmission was influenced by the death in January of that year of Joyce's grandson and literary estate executor, Stephen Joyce, and by the quarantine introduced in Ireland to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus.[4] It was broadcast once again on the 120th anniversary of Bloomsday on Radio 1 Extra on 16 June 2024.[5]
The novel Ulysses contains about 265,000 words from a vocabulary of 30,030 words.[6] This record-breaking and historic[1][7] live literary broadcast was originally released to the public, after the broadcast, as a recording on 20 audio cassettes in 1982[8] and later digitally remastered on compact disc 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).[9]
Narrators [10]
Cast
Production personnel
Ireland. 16 June 1982. 6:30 a.m. Radios all over the country emit the words 'Stately, plump Buck Mulligan', and don't stop broadcasting until they have read out every word of Ulysses, down to its last, heart-stopping syllable.