Blood Wedding by Federico Garca Lorca is a classic of Spanish literature the tragedy of a woman loved by two men. The man she has loved since childhood is hotblooded Leonardo but his family are hated by her own folk and he marries someone else. Then on her weddingnight Leonardo carries her off on horseback pursued by the men of the two shamed families. The two rivals meet in the moonlight in a ght to the death...Lorca said the only hope for happiness lies in living ones instinctual life to the full. And To burn with desire and to remain silent is the greatest punishment we can inict on ourselves. Blood Wedding explores the tragic intensity of lived instinctual passion. For Brendan Kennelly this involves a return to the very origins of drama The pure pulsing sense of the mysterious nature of life before we learn to explain things almost out of existence ... Blood Wedding is a drama of agonised and bewildering revelation. Lorca has a searing realisation of the power of desire. Brendan Kennelly rises to the challenge of how to convey this in an English translation. In language at once soaring and accurate wild and precise he does justice to Lorcas tragic vision of the nature and consequences of lived desire. His version of Blood Wedding reveals the mysterious intricate passionate and truly astonishing nature of Lorcas masterpiece. Brendan Kennellys versions of Euripides The Trojan Women and Medea and Sophocles Antigone are published by Bloodaxe Books in his drama trilogyampnbspWhen Then Is Now Three Greek Tragediesampnbsp2006. His version of Lorcas Blood Wedding was premired by Northern Stage in Newcastle and Derby in autumn 1996.ampnbspHis Antigone and The Trojan Women were both first performed at the Peacock Theatre Dublin in 1986 and 1993 respectively Medea premired in the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1988 toured in England in 1989 and was broadcast by BBC Radio 3.