OUR NEXT EVENT - ON SUNDAY 20 OCTOBER 2024
'GUARDING THE LEGACY:
COSIMA IN BAYREUTH 1883-1906'
BY ROBERT GAY
12.30pm:
DVD - Ring highlights from Valencia – Zubin Mehta
2.00pm:
‘Guarding the Legacy: Cosima in Bayreuth 1883-1906'
a presentation by
Robert Gay
Venue:
The Goethe Institut, Event Hall (upstairs),
90 Ocean Street (cnr Jersey Road), Woollahra
Tickets:
$25 members, $35 non-members and $10 full-time students
ABOUT COSIMA WAGNER
Francesca Gaetana Cosima Wagner (née Liszt; 24 December 1837 – 1 April 1930) was the daughter of the Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt and Franco-German romantic author Marie d’Agoult. She became the second wife of Richard Wagner, and with him founded the Bayreuth Festival as a showcase for his stage works; after his death she devoted the rest of her life to the promotion of his music and philosophy. Commentators have recognised Cosima as the principal inspiration for Wagner’s later works, particularly Parsifal.
ABOUT ROBERT GAY
Robert Gay has significant expertise as a music history educator and tour leader, having designed and led more than 100 tours to the great musical cities of Western and Central Europe and North America. Known for his popular music history courses, which have been offered at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Continuing Education for more than 30 years, Robert’s musical expertise extends from the Baroque period through to the great composers of the modern era. Robert trained as a lyric baritone in London and Munich, and he was also President of the Sydney Schubert Society for many years. He has been a guest lecturer for the Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society (ACNC), and is regularly invited to present talks on opera and music history to organisations such as the Wagner Society in NSW.
Zubin Mehta and the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia 2007- 9.Production by La Fura dels Baus.
Cast includes: Juha Uusitalo (Wotan), Jennifer Wilson (Brünnhilde), Lance Ryan (Siegfried), Matti Salminen (Hagen).
La Fura dels Baus is a Catalan theatre group founded in 1979 in Barcelona working with contemporary theatre and opera, as well as major events such as the opening ceremony for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. In opera, La Fura dels Baus stagings are renowned primarily for their abstract stylistic settings, where acrobats and 3D computer animations play a major role. The main idea behind Fura dels Baus staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen is to show “the degradation of nature by technological man”. Director Carlus Padrissa meticulously followed all of Wagner's original stage directions with “greater freedom and adapting it to our own aesthetics” while at the same time “going back to the spirit of Wagner, to the original mysticism and symbolism”.
