SUNDAY 19 APRIL 2026
AGM & TALK BY DR ANTONY ERNST:
DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG
IS NOT THE COMEDY YOU THINK IT IS
1.00pm
Annual General Meeting
2.00pm
Talk by Dr Antony Ernst –
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is not the comedy you think it is
Venue:
The Goethe Institut
90 Ocean Street (cnr Jersey Road)
Woollahra NSW
Tickets:
$35 members, $45 non-members, $15 full-time students
ABOUT THE TALK
Die Meistersinger is the only comedy of Wagner’s mature works, and in this and many ways is a bit of an anomaly. Curiously, despite being a comedy, it has also become one of his most controversial works. What drove him to write it? What was he trying to say? What is the root of the controversy and what might Wagner’s real intentions have been? Die Meistersinger is not the comedy you think it is.
ABOUT DR ANTONY ERNST
Australian-born Antony Ernst has a multi-faceted career as a dramaturg, director, arts administrator, writer, translator, lecturer, and consultant. Management posts include General Manager of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne in Switzerland, Orchestra Director of the Royal Danish Orchestra in Copenhagen, Head of Artistic Planning and Production at the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg in France, and Artistic Planning Manager at the Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand. He has worked as a director with opera houses in Sydney, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Rome, Frankfurt, and Seville. He is also much in demand as a lecturer on opera and classical music, particularly about Wagner, Janáček, and Strauss. He is the creator and director of the Peer Gynt project, which he has produced in Hobart (in English); Bremen, Germany (in German); and Tromsø and Bodø, Norway (in Norwegian).
Antony isone of our most popular presenters, who has enlightened us about Wagner and his operas for many years.. Members may be interested in Antony’s presentations since 1995:
- 2024 – a speaker in the Die Walküre Symposium – Law and Power in Die Walküre
- 2019 – a seminar on Parsifal
- 2018 – a seminar on Tristan und Isolde
- 2017 – a seminar on Lohengrin
- 2016– a seminar on Bach to the Future: Wagner’s Roots and the German Nation
- 2014 – a talk on Beyond the twilight of the gods: Wagner’s musical legacy
- 2013 – a workshop on Forging Meaning out of Music: Heritage, Complexity and Vision of the Ring, introduced by Lyndon Terracini, Artistic Director of Opera Australia
- 2009 – a talk on From Malediction to Valediction – curses and dramatic resolution in Wagner
- 2007– a talk on Tristan und Isolde – Wagner, the Appian Way, and the General Theory of Relativity.
- 2005 – an interview with Jessica Pratt
- 2004 – a survey of Ring Cycle production styles
- 2003:
- a talk on Parsifal – a number of possible interpretations, including Kundry’s Jewish past as Herodias, the sin of mixed blood (Kundry’s with Parsifal’s pure Aryan), Titurel as God the Father (and his Nietzschean death), Amfortas as Christ, the Redeemer redeemed.
- a talk on Historical and then interpretational aspects of Meistersinger, as part of the Joint Art Gallery of NSW and Wagner Society Meistersinger Seminar
- 2002:
- a talk on Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot
- a talk on Rienzi
- 1998:
- a lecture on ‘Das Rheingold and Wagner the man’a Lecture on ‘Die Walküre and Wagner’s musical sources’a Lecture on ‘Siegfried and Wagnerian voices – why are they different?’
- a lecture on ‘Götterdämmerung and some production difficulties in staging the Ring’
- 1997:
- a talk on The beginning of the Endless Melody – the first sixty years of performance of Tristan und Isolde
- a speaker in the Tannhäuser Seminar co-hosted by the AGNSW and the Wagner Society covering opera, history and art.
- 1996 – a speaker in the Seminar on Die Walküre
- 1995 – a speaker in the Seminar on Das Rheingold