The epic poem "Beowulf" in the original Old English (Anglo-Saxon) will be performed by noted scholar and performer Benjamin Bagby, Feb. 8 at 8 p.m. in Cornell's Barnes Hall Auditorium. The free performance is open to the public.

Bagby plays the role of a bard, speaking and singing a story while accompanying himself on the six-stringed Anglo-Saxon harp.

Founder of the medieval music ensemble Sequentia and a member of the faculty at Sorbonne University in Paris, Bagby has spent the last 19 years giving live readings of Beowulf. He performs the first chapter of the epic, relating to the hero and his fight with the monster Grendel. A translation is projected behind him, but it tends to become secondary as Bagby interprets and articulates the work.

The show at Cornell is co-sponsored by the Mortar Board Honor Society, University Lectures Committee, Department of Music and the Department of Medieval Studies, among several others.

"He's able to take this idea of a much more fluid compositional structure and apply it to his retelling of the poem, so it never is the same performance, just as 'Beowulf' itself, before it was written down, was likely never the same performance," says Samantha Zacher, assistant professor in the Department of English. The poem, written in Old English more than a millennium ago, tells the story of the Scandinavian warrior Beowulf who slays two monsters, and then, in old age, is fatally wounded in a fight with a dragon.

"Because the performance is so interdisciplinary in nature, it's going to be appealing to specialists and nonspecialists alike. We really hope to attract a diverse audience," says performance coordinator Alex Wolf.

Bagby also will participate in a Feb. 7 open discussion in Goldwin Smith Hall at 4:30 p.m. and visit Zacher's Feb. 8 Beowulf class.

Cornell Cinema will screen the 2005 Canadian/Icelandic film "Beowulf and Grendel," Feb. 9 at 7:15 p.m. in Uris Hall.