22 JUNE 2025: Associate Professor Stephen Mould on Carlo Felice Cillario & Wagner

12.00 noon:
DVD – Met Opera 1994 – Parsifal, Act 2

2.00pm:
Talk by Associate Professor Stephen Mould on
Carlo Felice Cillario & Wagner

Venue:
The Goethe Institut, Event Hall (upstairs),
90 Ocean Street (cnr Jersey Road), Woollahra

Tickets:
$25 members, $35 non-members, $10 full-time students

Program – to come

Media gallery

ABOUT STEPHEN MOULD

Sydney-born, Assoc Prof Stephen Mould is a graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In 1985 he moved to London to continue his studies at the Royal Academy of Music. During this time, he was active as an orchestral and choral conductor and as a freelance repetiteur. In 1988 he was appointed Head of Music at the Lyric Opera of Queensland. In 1990 Stephen returned to Europe and was engaged as a conductor and musical assistant by a  number of opera houses and festivals in Germany, Belgium, Norway and Italy. In 1996 he joined the music staff of Opera Australia. Subsequently, he has undertaken engagements for the Sydney Festival, the Melbourne Festival, Symphony Australia and the Sydney Philharmonic Choirs. He was also engaged for State Opera of South Australia’s productions of Der Ring des Nibelungen (1998 and 2004) and Parsifal (2002). Stephen was Head of Music at Opera Australia between 2004 and 2008 and is currently Senior Lecturer in Conducting, Opera Studies and Repetiteurship at the Sydney Conservatorium, and Artistic Director of the Conservatorium Opera. 

Stephen has had a long association with the Wagner Society in NSW: he was a special guest at an early Wagner birthday celebration; he gave recitals with Warwick Fyfe and with Lisa-Harper Brown; he spoke via zoom in 2021 about his book Curating Opera; and he was a speaker at the Symposium on Die Walküre last year, where he spoke on rehearsing and performing, on stage or in concert (Reflections on Die Walküre in advance of a concert performance).

ABOUT THE TALK

Since publishing his book on Italian conductor Carlo Felice Cillario (1915 – 2007), Stephen has continued his research into Cillario (and Italian conductors generally) and Wagner, and found some live recordings of Cillario’s Wagner from Sydney and Melbourne. Stephen writes about his proposed talk; ‘I’m aware that Cillario considered himself to be part of a rich heritage of Italian Wagner conductors and I’ve explored that and come up with some interesting material. I’m also aware that there were a considerable number of people in Australia who felt that he was a questionable choice for conductor of Wagner’s later music dramas – including the Ring. I also would like to unpack some of the behind the scenes politics around the 1983-4 Ring Cycle, and even encourage some Q&A discussion, as I know that it remains a somewhat sensitive subject among many Wagnerians. Around 1968, Cillario was conducting all over the world. He had conducted a Tosca with Callas in 1964, and his career was thriving. He did not accept the engagement to come to Australia because of the Tosca at the Adelaide Festival. It seems that his decision was based upon the opportunity to conduct Tannhäuser. He made his Australian debut in Canberra, conducting it, with a chorus of about 25, and an orchestra of about 45 players.’ Thus began a love affair between this eminent musician and Australia and its artists that endured for nearly four decades.