Forthcoming Events
Owing to ongoing concerns re Covid-19, all talks will be delivered over Zoom, unless otherwise indicated, from 6.30-8.30 pm. Members are not required to pre-book on Eventbrite. Non-members are welcome to attend, and they should book on Eventbrite via the link provided for each event. A notice will be sent to members of the Society one month before each talk with Zoom details if appropriate. A link to the Zoom meeting will be sent to non-members who book on Eventbrite.
Admission:
Zoom: £5 for non-members, free for members. Free for students.
Student membership of the Society is free.
2024
29th October – 7.00 pm. Please note this is a Tuesday. This will be a joint Zoom event with the Wagner Societies in London and Manchester, hosted by London. Members will receive the Zoom link from their own society. Non-members who book through the Wagner Society of Scotland on Eventbrite will receive the Zoom link from us.
Ulrich Jagels – “View Behind the Scenes at the Bayreuth Festspiele”
Managing Director of the Bayreuth Festival.
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24th November – 6.30 pm
Rachell Nicholls (Soprano) in conversation with Derek Williams
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8th December – 6.30 pm. In-person event at Edinburgh Society of Musicians
Annual General Meeting (Members only) Members will be sent the Zoom link in advance.
followed by Laurence Dreyfus – “Wagner and the Erotic Impulse in Munich” Non-members may attend this part of the event in person only.
Professor Laurence Dreyfus is emeritus professor at the University of Oxford. Professor Dreyfus is the author of the award-winning book ‘Wagner and the Erotic Impulse’, which was the American Musicology Society best book of the year in 2010. Professor Dreyfus is both a noted Bach and Wagner scholar, as well as an expert performer. He founded the viol consort Phantasm which went on to win a gramophone award, and collaborated with Sylvia Mcnair in a grammy winning album of Purcell songs. Alex Ross describes the book as an illuminating study “which shows how Wagner’s obsession with sexuality prefigured the composition of operas such as Tannhauser, Die Walkure, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal”. Professor Dreyfus will talk about aspects of his award-winning book pertaining to Munich.
2025
26th January 6.30 pm
Dr Patrick Carnegy, 15th Earl of Northesk – “Wagner’s Theatre – In Search of a Legacy”. In conversation with Derek Williams.
23rd February – 6.30 pm
Marc Weiner – “Wagner’s Anti-Semitism and its Relevance to his Music Dramas”
Professor Emeritus, Department of Germanic Studies, Indiana University.
In the second half of the 20th century there was widespread reticence, both in Wagnerian scholarship and in the general public alike, to acknowledge and discuss Richard Wagner’s antisemitism, and a refusal to recognize its role in the understanding of his music dramas. But an appreciation of the composer’s thoughts concerning the allegedly nefarious danger Jews posed to the development of German art and society is essential to assessing both the construction of various individual dramatic characters and the ideological implications of the dramatic machinations of many of Wagner’s most celebrated works for the stage.
30th March – 6.30 pm. In-person Event at Edinburgh Society of Musicians
Hans Rudolf Vaget – “Es Lebe Amerika!” Richard Wagner and the New World
20th April – 6.30 pm
Richard Bell – “The theology of Tristan and Isolde”
18th May – 6.30 pm
Reverend Professor Patrick S Cheng – “Wagner from a Queer Perspective”