This is the Society’s annual “deep dive” into a Wagner-related work currently in the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera. This year we will visit a work that many regard as Richard Strauss’s masterpiece: Die Frau ohne Schatten. Join us in a conversation about Richard Strauss’s most richly scored and opulently exotic work, with a highly symbolic and intellectual libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a mixture of fairy-tale, magic, and Freudian psychology.
Speakers include Prof. Bryan Gilliam of Duke University, Dr. Anna Balas of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, Prof. Larry Wolff of New York University, and our very popular Singers’ Roundtable featuring members of the cast of the Met production. Critic and lecturer David Shengold will return as our Moderator.
Program:
12:00 p.m. | Welcome by Chairman John Ryan and Moderator David Shengold |
12:05 – 12:55 p.m. | Prof. Larry Wolff, “Die Frau ohne Schatten, World War One, and the Departure of Emperors and Empresses” |
12:55 – 1:15 | break |
1:15 – 2:00 pm | Dr. Anna Balas, “Shadowless Women: A Psychoanalytic Perspective” |
2:00 – 2:15 p.m. | break |
2:15 – 3:00 p.m. | Met Cast Roundtable:
Michael Volle (Barak the Dyer) other cast members TBA |
3:00 – 3:15 p.m. | break |
3:15 – 4:00 p.m. | Prof. Bryan Gilliam, “Die Frau ohne Schatten and the Problem of Marriage” |
Spend the day exploring an opera that author Sherrill Hahn Pantle said “stands before the audiences of the last quarter of the twentieth century as the incarnation of a lost innocence and the realization of a lost hope.”
Books and other items relating to Strauss and Wagner will be available for sale and refreshments will be served. Continue the conversation over dinner or a drink: for post-event gatherings, we recommend Bohemian Spirit, the Czech restaurant located on the first floor of Bohemian National Hall.
Discount Tickets: WSNY Members get 15% off the Met’s run of Die Frau ohne Schatten this season – check your email for details.
Livestream is available; or watch up to 36 hours after the program (midnight Tuesday, December 10).
About the speakers:
Anna Balas MD is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst for adults and children in private practice on the UES in Manhattan. She is a training and supervising analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the oldest in the US. She teaches on Normal and Pathological Narcissism and on Psychic Trauma. Dr. Balas is also Associate Professor at the Payne Whitney Division of the Weill Cornell Medical Center. She has an interest in transcultural factors and creativity. She is the author of a chapter entitled “Yearning for Intimacy: Bela Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” in a volume entitled Opera on the Couch: Music, Emotional Life and Unconscious Aspects of the Mind, editors S. Goldberg and L. Rather (Routledge, 2022). |
David Shengold is a critic and lecturer and resides in New York City. He regularly writes for Opera (with Opera News) as well as Opéra Magazine, Opernwelt and other publications. He has done program essays for companies including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and the Wexford and Glyndebourne festivals. |
Bryan Gilliam Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus at Duke University (Department of Music and German). He has published five books on Richard Strauss, most recently Rounding Wagner’s Mountain: Richard Strauss and Modern German Opera (Cambridge University Press). He is writing a sixth one on Salome for Oxford Keynotes. Beyond scholarly venues, he has given lectures at various national and international festivals such as Bayreuth, Salzburg, and Mostly Mozart, among others; as well as opera and concert venues: Lincoln Center Great Performances, New York Philharmonic, American Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Santa Fe Opera, and the San Francisco Opera. Besides Strauss, he has published on Anton Bruckner, Kurt Weill, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. |
Larry Wolff Ph.D. is Julius Silver Professor of History at New York University. At NYU he has previously served as Executive Director of the Remarque Institute and as Co-Director of NYU Florence at Villa La Pietra. His most recent book (a book about Die Frau ohne Schatten) is The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy (2023). His books also include The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon (2016), The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (2010), and Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (1994). He writes frequently about opera, publishing essays and reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Hudson Review. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. |