This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” I indulge my inner English major with a program inspired by two plays that explore the relationship of power and corruption – Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.”

While the world’s eyes are on the Olympic Games in Brazil, our ears will be with the country’s most celebrated composer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and a ballet which was originally performed on television in 1957. Somehow the score was never published. In fact, for decades it was even believed lost, until rediscovered by the conductor Jan Wagner (who is Venezuelan, despite his Teutonic name). Wagner will conduct the Odense Symphony Orc hestra, a Nordic band, in a surprisingly idiomatic performance.

Also on the program will be a half-remembered relic of American musical history, an aria from Louis Gruenberg’s opera, “The Emperor Jones,” sung by baritone Lawrence Tibbett, recorded in 1933.

“The Emperor Jones,” written in 1920, could be a sensitive subject in a more politically correct era. No doubt about it, O’Neill’s tragedy is a product of its time, with plenty of minstrel show dialect, and the uncomfortable use of the N-word.

Already in 1924, Sidney Gilpin, the actor who created Brutus Jones, hedged at playing the character in its first revival, unless O’Neill first changed what he perceived as some of the more offensive passages. O’Neill stood his ground, and Gilpin’s replacement, Paul Robeson, went on to international stardom.

It’s easy to write-off “The Emperor Jones” as an embarrassing relic. Yet there have been some high-profile stagings over the past few years which demonstrate that the play still has much to tell us.

Jones is a former railroad porter and convict, who kills a guard in his escape from prison, and through bluff and bravado establishes himself as emperor of a Caribbean island. He maintains his power through cruelty and exploitation. However, he overplays his hand, and the situation quickly erodes. As his subjects rise up against him, Jones retreats into the jungle and descends into primal fear, haunted by images of his victims.

The play not only parallels some of the themes of “Macbeth,” it also demonstrates the fragility of human reason; how easily under the influence of adrenaline, brought on by raw terror, man is undone by the animal impulses of fight or flight; the psychological impact of guilt; and an insight into tyranny which was remarkably prescient given that fascism would soon overtake Europe.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me before to juxtapose the two plays, but a quick Google search reveals that I am not the first, so there goes my dream of an honorary doctorate.

Also on the show will be selections from rarely-heard incidental music written for two productions of “Macbeth,” by William Walton (for John Gielgud) and Sir Arthur Sullivan (for Henry Irving), respectively.

Power corrupts, on “Power Plays,” this Sunday night at 10 EDT. Listen to it then, or catch it later as a webcast, at wwfm.org.

The José Limón Dance Company performs Heitor Villa-Lobos’ “The Emperor Jones”:

PHOTO: Choreographer José Limón as Emperor Jones, with Mindinha & Heitor Villa-Lobos