Stephen Gould Book Launch & Annual Meeting

An event to celebrate the life of Stephen Gould and the publication of his book Performing Wagner: A Singer’s Perspective on the Major Roles. Co-author Peter Phillips will relate how the book took form and lead a discussion on some of the many interesting insights that Gould offers on Wagner’s heroic characters.

At the time of his early death in autumn 2023, the internationally renowned American Heldentenor Stephen Gould was putting the finishing touches to this unusual book, where he shares his unique insights into Wagner’s major tenor roles: Tannhäuser, Tristan, Siegfried, Siegmund and Loge in The Ring of the Nibelung, Lohengrin, Erik in The Flying Dutchman and Parsifal. Basing his understanding on the experience of hundreds of performances around the world, he describes how he learned to inhabit each character, portraying motivation in a manner that matches Wagner’s music with narrative cohesion on stage. He also discusses what he learned from working with conductors and stage directors and offers some thoughts on vocal technique.

Stephen Gould

There are countless books on Wagner and his operas; this one may be the first to put the reader in the shoes of the interpreter – a novel perspective which should be of interest to students, teachers, directors, Wagner commentators and audience members, as well as to other performers and to musicians more generally. The book opens with a preface by Katharina Wagner, the composer’s great-granddaughter and director of the Bayreuth Festival, and ends with tributes to Stephen Gould from some of the leading Wagner singers of the day.

The program will be preceded by a brief Annual Membership Meeting. The purpose of the Annual Meeting is to elect the 2024-25 Board of Directors and to hear reports of the 2023-24 Officers and Committees, and to conduct any other business that may be properly raised. Your vote is needed! Members who cannot attend in person may send in (by mail or electronically, returning it to arrive no later than Noon Tuesday, June 11, 2024) the form (sent by postal mail and online here) to designate a proxy.

F. Peter Phillips

About the speaker: F. Peter Phillips, president of the Wagner Society of New York since 2022, is an attorney specializing in mediation, arbitration and dispute resolution and serves as Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law and Director of the ADR Skills program at New York Law School. He is a cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College and trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.