Wagner's Revolution
Gesamtkunstwerk - 'Total Work of Art'
Online Lecture
SNAPSHOT
Lecturer: Dr. Carol B. Reynolds
Date: Saturday 8 February, 2025
Duration: 1 hour
Start Time: 4.00pm AEDT | 3.00pm QLD | 3.30pm SA | 1.00pm WA | 6.00pm NZST
Price: $25 AUD
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Overview
Few artists have wielded more influence than Richard Wagner - and few are as controversial, even 141 years after his death.
Rooted in Classical ideals and filled with innovations, Wagner’s operas seem inexhaustible in their ability to stir the passions. His innovations changed theatrical design and architecture, fostered the construction of new instruments, and exploded the parameters of traditional harmony, melody, orchestral color and musical form. The fantastic music-dramas he created, particularly The Ring of the Niebelungen and Tristan and Isolde, continue to inspire composers, novelists, film makers and artists today.
In her inaugural lecture with Academy Travel, join musicologist Dr Carol B. Reynolds for a thorough immersion in the fascinating “Wagner Story,” which traces the musical styles that nurtured his talents as well as the high (and low) points of his complex life. This lecture also explores how Wagner's successes at times resulted from twists of fate, as well as the efforts of a cast of luminaries, including the astonishing Hungarian virtuoso Franz Liszt and the fairy-tale King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
Alongside the rich gifts this restless genius gave to the world, this lecture also considers the darker side of Wagner's legacy, and how - rooted in his writings and the Zeitgeist of late Romantic Europe - Wagner's failings would be exploited by infamous figures after his death.
Your Expert lecturer
Prof. Carol Reynolds is a musicologist who specialises in Russian, East European, and German cultural history.
During her career as a professor of music history at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, she founded and directed her university’s German study program in Weimar. Since 2011, she has worked extensively as an expert for the travel division of the Smithsonian Institute, leading tours through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Russia, the Baltic countries, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia, and Slovenia. She also has led tours to Russia on behalf of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Dallas Opera.
A proponent of teaching history through the lens of the Fine Arts, Carol has brought her wealth of knowledge to audiences of all ages, presenting programs for every significant arts organization in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. She also worked for 25 years as the pre-concert lecturer for the Van Cliburn Concert Series.
Born in Roanoke, Virginia, she earned her Bachelor’s of Music at Hollins College, Virginia, and her Master’s degree in piano and Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was awarded a State Department grant to conduct dissertation research at the Leningrad Conservatory and returned to Russia many times for research. She speaks Russian and German fluently and has lived at various times in Germany.
Recently moving with her family to North Carolina, Carol spends much of her time as a curriculum developer, and consultant engaged in the revival of Classical Education. With her husband Hank, a music theorist and copyright attorney, she has written books and created courses in history and the Fine Arts. She works closely with Memoria Press, Classical Academic Press, the Circe Institute, and teaches in a Great Books Masters’ Program at Memoria College.
Booking
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