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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250320T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250320T203000
DTSTAMP:20260715T080220
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SUMMARY:Anton Bruckner & Richard Wagner
DESCRIPTION:Conductor Jakob Lehmann presents an exploration of the fascinating relationship between Anton Bruckner and Richard Wagner – a connection that was characterized by one-sided admiration and disappointed hopes. The younger revered the elder\, even if the latter did not always fulfill his few promises. For Bruckner\, however\, Wagner always remained the ‘master of all masters.’ Particular attention will be paid to the myth of Bruckner’s “Wagner symphony” and the facts behind it. Audio examples will show how performance traditions of both composers have changed over the years\, from the first recorded performances to today’s interpretations. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nJakob Lehmann on Bruckner & Wagner March 2025\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFor further reading: Bruckner in Bayreuth from the Anton Bruckner Institut Linz (in German)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSocial hour after the evening's lecture\n\n\n\n\n\n“There is so much mythmaking going on in the 20th century\, and especially once the Third Reich started to get their hands and their ideology on Bruckner. There is so much mythmaking that has nothing to do with historical precedent – and still today – that mythmaking is influencing the actual musical interpretations of these pieces. And what I think may not really be clear enough to us is that with many other composers\, we have tried to make a clean slate: But in Wagner and Bruckner\, that just hasn’t happened yet in the way that it maybe should have happened. And this is something that I’ve personally been very interested in exploring.” \nAbout the speaker: Conductor Jakob Lehmann is the Artistic Director of the chamber orchestra Eroica Berlin\, and Associate Artistic Director of New York based Bel canto festival Teatro Nuovo.  The week after his appearance with the WSNY he will lead period instrument ensemble Juilliard415 in a performance of Beethoven’s Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus\, Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 2\, live at Alice Tully Hall\, and streamed on Juilliard.live and WQXR on Saturday\, March 29 at 7:30 p.m. \nThe event will be followed by a social hour with refreshments. \nSource Material: Mr. Lehmann emphasized the importance of the book Bruckner in Bayreuth\, a publication of the Anton Bruckner Institut Linz (2019\, Musikwissenschaftlicher Verlag Wien – in German). \nLivestream: the event will be livestreamed (viewable up to 36 hours after the start of the event). WSNY Members will receive livestream link automatically by e-mail; no need to pre-register. \nAccessibility: The Opera America building has ground-level entry with elevators to the 7th floor.  Wheelchair accessible; modular seating will be arranged to accommodate wheelchairs and walkers. Handicap-accessible restrooms are available on the same floor. The venue is located on the west side of 7th Avenue between 28th-29th Streets\, closer to 29th Street. Sidewalk curb cuts at the 29th Street corner are uneven; for easier access and tactile paving enter from the 28th Street corner (at the downtown #1 subway station).
URL:https://wagnersocietyny.org/event/anton-bruckner-richard-wagner/
LOCATION:National Opera Center\, 330 Seventh Avenue\, 7th Floor\, New York\, NY\, 10001\, United States
CATEGORIES:Lecture
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260211T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260211T193000
DTSTAMP:20260715T080220
CREATED:20251103T154330Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260204T201830Z
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SUMMARY:Wagner/Brahms: Music\, Culture\, and Politics
DESCRIPTION:Wagner/Brahms: Music\, Culture\, and Politics: A comparative study of two paragons of 19th century German romanticism. \nThis lecture will explore the relationship between two figures who were arguably the most important German composers of the late nineteenth century. Although early on Wagner and Brahms had several positive interactions and even expressed mutual admiration\, the two composers became caught up in a broader culture war\, pitted against each other by their respective followers. In this conflict\, Wagner was often depicted as modern and progressive and Brahms as backward-looking and conservative. But their musical languages\, as well as their cultural and political values\, suggest the opposite may be the case. \nAbout the speaker: Walter Frisch is H. Harold Gumm/Harry and Albert von Tilzer Professor of Music at Columbia University in New York\, where he has taught since 1982.  He has also been a guest professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany\, Yale University\, Princeton University\, and the University of Pennsylvania and has lectured on music throughout the United States\, and in England\, France\, Spain\, Germany\, and China. \nProfessor Frisch is a specialist in the music of composers from the Austro-German sphere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries\, ranging from Schubert to Schoenberg.  He has written numerous articles and two books on Brahms\, including Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation (1984) and Brahms: the Four Symphonies (1996\, 2003).  He served as editor of the volume Brahms and His World (1990\, 2009) and was the founding president of the American Brahms Society in 1983.  He is the co-author\, with George S. Bozarth\, of the Brahms article in the second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2000). Professor Frisch’s publications on Schoenberg include the book The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg\, 1893-1908 (1993) and the edited volume Schoenberg and His World (1999).  He also edited and contributed to a volume on Schubert’s music\, Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies (1986). His book German Modernism: Music and the Arts (2005) investigates the relationships between music and its cultural context in Austria and Germany during the period 1880-1915. \nThe event will be followed by a social hour with refreshments. \nLivestream: the event will be livestreamed (viewable up to 36 hours after the start of the event). WSNY Members receive livestream link automatically by e-mail; no need to pre-register. \nLocation: NOTE CHANGE: this event will take place in the Rehearsal Hall on the 7th floor of the National Opera Center\, to the left as one enters at reception.
URL:https://wagnersocietyny.org/event/wagner-brahms-music-culture-and-politics/
LOCATION:National Opera Center\, 330 Seventh Avenue\, 7th Floor\, New York\, NY\, 10001\, United States
CATEGORIES:Lecture
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260721T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260721T190000
DTSTAMP:20260715T080220
CREATED:20260622T001358Z
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SUMMARY:Rienzi: A Critical Introduction
DESCRIPTION:Two Wagner experts will engage in a conversation about his early success\, Rienzi\, der letzte der Tribunen.  Topics will include the plot\, the source material\, reflections on the influences of then-current opera composition\, and indications of the innovations to come in Wagner’s next work\, Der fliegende Holländer. \nJohn Deathridge’s many publications about Wagner include Wagner’s ‘Rienzi’: a Reappraisal based on a Study of the Sketches and Drafts (Oxford 1977)\, still the only academic monograph devoted exclusively to the opera. John lives in Cambridge England where he was a Fellow of King’s College and Lecturer (then Reader) at the University from 1983 to 1996\, after which he was appointed to the King Edward VII Chair of Music at King’s College London. Now Emeritus after retiring in 2013\, he continues to pursue his interest in performance and research. His English translation of Der Ring des Nibelungen was published by Random House as a Penguin Classic in 2018 and his current work includes a fresh look at Beethoven and the Enlightenment. Connections between Beethoven and Rienzi – and the Bayreuth Festival as a whole – will inform part of the discussion. \nJohn J. H. Muller IV is a faculty emeritus of The Juilliard School\, where for many years he taught a wide variety of courses in the music history department. From 2010 to 2019\, he presented lectures for the Wagner Society of New York at the Bayreuth Festival and for other Wagner Societies in the United States. Prof. Muller has also been a noted speaker for the Metropolitan Opera Guild and the American Psychoanalytic Association. His essay on Parsifal appeared in the book\, Wagner Outside the Ring\, and a chapter on Tristan und Isolde was included in Opera on the Couch\, published in 2022. \nLivestream: the event will be livestreamed via Zoom only; no replay available. \nWSNY Members receive livestream link automatically by e-mail; no need to purchase.
URL:https://wagnersocietyny.org/event/rienzi-a-critical-introduction/
CATEGORIES:Lecture
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LOCATION:https://wagnersocietyny.org/event/rienzi-a-critical-introduction/
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20260816T103000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20260816T130000
DTSTAMP:20260715T080220
CREATED:20260714T201528Z
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SUMMARY:Parsifal Lecture in Bayreuth: Thomas Launius
DESCRIPTION:Join us for a two-part lecture from Dr. Thomas Launius\, that includes a short break for a sandwich and soft-drink lunch. \n10:30am – 11:30am Part 1 Morning Session: Wagner’s Wolfram\n\n\n\n11:30am – 12:00 noon Lunch Break\n\n\n\n12:00pm – 1:00pm Part 2 Afternoon Session: You Become What You Reject\n\n\n\n\n  \nMorning Session: Wagner’s Wolfram — How a Medieval Grail Knight Became an Operatic Myth \n\n\nRichard Wagner didn’t simply adapt Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival — he dismantled it and rebuilt it according to a completely different logic. In this opening session\, mythologist and storyteller Dr. Thomas Launius applies the tools of the Historical-Critical Method to Wagner’s 1877 libretto\, tracing the specific decisions Wagner made in transforming characters\, compressing settings\, and fundamentally reconceiving the Grail itself. What emerges is not just a source comparison\, but a portrait of a composer working as a mythmaker — selectively suppressing\, amplifying\, and reinventing his medieval inheritance to produce something that exceeds its sources in every direction. Listeners familiar with the opera will find the work defamiliarized in productive ways; those new to the medieval tradition will discover that Wagner’s Parsifal is\, among other things\, a brilliant act of creative concealment. \n\n\nAfternoon Session: You Become What You Reject — How Wagner Built the Structure and Brought the Fire \n\n\nHaving dismantled Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval epic\, Wagner faced a formidable challenge: what he had left lacked structure and momentum. In this afternoon session\, Dr. Thomas Launius uses the Historical-Critical Method to reveal how Wagner reached into the deep riches of the European fairy tale tradition. Drawing on ancient narrative patterns\, Wagner found the structural spine and the energetic engine his opera required. The result is a work of extraordinary compositional intelligence — one in which a single bewitched figure connects every character in the drama\, and a single moral test is deployed four times with escalating intensity\, each more demanding than the last. And a delicious irony is revealed: in the very act of rejecting Wolfram\, Wagner became more like Wolfram than Wolfram himself ever could have been. \n\n\n\nThomas Launius was born into a military family and spent his early years living in England\, Germany\, Japan\, and the United States. He came of age in Louisiana\, earning a degree in Physics from Louisiana State University alongside a minor in Vocal Performance. Trained as a tenor\, he sang in university and regional opera productions for five years before turning to the academic study of story\, symbol\, and myth. He later earned a doctorate in Mythology and spent over three decades as a professional storyteller\, speaker\, and mentor working at the intersection of narrative\, meaning\, and human transformation. \n\n\nIn 2017\, Thomas fulfilled a lifelong dream by relocating to Bavaria\, not far from Munich. Since 2019\, he has worked as a professional tour guide specialising in historically rich and mythologically resonant experiences throughout Munich\, Salzburg\, and especially Neuschwanstein Castle — the fairytale fortress built by King Ludwig II as a living tribute to Richard Wagner and his operas. \n\n\nHis encounter with Wagner through Neuschwanstein opened into a sustained scholarly engagement with Wagner’s work\, and particularly with Parsifal. Applying the Historical-Critical Method — the rigorous interpretive framework developed by German biblical scholars and since extended across literary and cultural analysis — Thomas brings source criticism\, redaction criticism\, and social-historical analysis to bear on Wagner’s libretto\, situating the opera within the full depth of its medieval sources\, its 19th-century intellectual context\, and its ongoing challenge to 21st-century audiences. His work draws on the mythological scholarship of Paul Ricoeur\, Max Lüthi\, and Joachim Kaiser\, among others\, and is animated by the conviction that genuine critical understanding deepens rather than diminishes our encounter with great art. \nThomas is a member of the Munich Wagner Society — the München Wagner Verband\, the second oldest Wagner Society in the world — and lectures to Wagner Societies internationally. \n  \nThis in-person-only event will take place at the Arvena Kongress Hotel in Bayreuth\, Germany. \nTickets are $25 in advance online. A sandwich and soft-drink lunch is included. Pre-registration is required\, and ends on August 13.
URL:https://wagnersocietyny.org/event/parsifal-lecture-in-bayreuth-thomas-launius/
LOCATION:Arvena Kongress Hotel\, Eduard-Bayerlin Str. 5a\, Bayreuth\, 95445\, Germany
CATEGORIES:Bayreuth,Lecture
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