Proms to launch with Ukrainian premiere and Lesley Manville

Award-winning actress Lesley Manville will help to launch the 2023 Proms season on Friday night, narrating a new translation of Jean Sibelius's Snöfrid.

The star, who plays Princess Margaret in The Crown, will be making her Proms debut alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

The opening night will also feature a new work by Ukrainian composer Bohdana Frolyak, called Let The Light In.

And the BBC Singers will perform, just months after being saved from closure.

Time was called on the UK's only full-time professional chamber earlier this year as a result of BBC budget cuts.

However, the 20-member group were given hope in March after "a number of organisations" came forward to offer alternative funding.

They will now appear at five concerts throughout the eight-week Proms season.

Concerts will take place across the UK, from Cornwall to Perth and Derry to Aberystwyth, although the festival's headquarters remain at the Royal Albert Hall.

Eager Prommers were already queuing outside the venue at 08:00 BST on Friday morning, hoping to get one of the 1,000 on-the-day tickets that are available for every show, for just £8.

"The point with the Proms is it is the most accessible of all arts festivals," says BBC Radio 3's Petroc Trelawney, who is hosting many of this year's concerts.

"What senior football match can you go to for eight pounds? What opera? How much do you have to pay to see Beyoncé or Elton John?

"But here, you can be right at the front, within touching distance of the orchestra, with the music unfolding around you."

Highlights of the 2023 season include Sir Simon Rattle conducting Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri on 22 August, and Mahler's 9th Symphony on 27 August, in what will be his final appearances with the London Symphony Orchestra.

The Proms will host its first ever complete performance of Berlioz's epic, five-hour opera Les Troyens, and the team behind CBBC show Horrible Histories will present a young person's guide to the opera.

Visiting international orchestras will include the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, who will allow the audience to choose the works they play.

There will also be a concert devoted to Portuguese Fado music, an unmissable performance of Stevie Wonder's Innervisions album and a "mindful" Prom featuring music by Ola Gjeilo, Radiohead and Philip Glass.

Saturday night will celebrate the Northern Soul movement, with the BBC Concert Orchestra playing cult favourites like You're Gonna Make Me Love You, Open the Door to Your Heart and Hold Back the Night.

"Orchestral versions of pop music have become sort of a boom industry in the last few years," says Stuart Maconie, who helped curate the programme. "And with no disparagement to those, some of them can feel a little bit contrived.

"Northern Soul, absolutely not, because so many of the original records feature orchestration, so its in the vocabulary of the music already."

The opening night will also mark a show of solidarity with the musicians of Ukraine.

Alongside the world premiere of Let The Light In, the concert will open with a performance of Sibelius's Finlandia, written in 1900 as a protest against Russia's encroaching interference in Finland.

"I don't think classical music can operate in a vacuum," says Trelawney. "Lots of the music that we perform at the Proms was written 100 or 150 years ago, but the point is, it's also the music of now.

"We can't ignore the fact that there are troubles in the world outside the Royal Albert Hall. The BBC Symphony Orchestra players tonight will be thinking of other cellists and double bassists and violinists who are unable to play in concerts at the moment for political reasons.

"And I think it's it is vital that the Proms and classical music as a whole stays connected to the reality of the world around us."

BBC TV will show 24 concerts from this year's programme, while all 84 concerts will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and available on BBC Sounds for a year.