A Story Map of the Land of the Ring AND Wagner Societies Today

JCC-SF 3200 California Street (intersection of California and Presidio – San Francisco, CA) 2nd Floor Gallanter Hall

The originally scheduled program “Genius in Exile” with Antoine Pasquier Wagner is postponed. We are in the process of rescheduling this program. The Society is delighted that Marty Kirschen has agreed to move his Fall program in to fill the spot with his talk: “Story Map of the Land of the Ring”

There is a special addition to the program!

Bayreuth University student Elfi Vomberg will be giving a short presentation at the beginning of the meeting. Elfi Vomberg is traveling to several cities in Germany, the U.S. and Japan, collecting information for her dissertation on Wagner Societies – “Wagnervereine heute” (Wagner Societies Today). Vomberg will give a short talk and will schedule one-on-one interviews with a few members. There will also be an on-line questionaire which members can complete at their leisure.

Next we will introduce our guest speaker, Marty Kirschen will give a two-part talk which will take us on a journey along the many pathways of the Ring. Part 1 is a Quiz – The Ring of Fortune, the audience will participate in a quiz covering categories such as Distances and Directions, Birds and Beasts, Nature, Human Nature to name a few. The audience will also be invited to raise their own questions and everyone gets prizes.

In Part Two Kirschen invites everyone to join him on this epic journey of the Ring using maps he has designed. These maps were constructed using the opera stage directions, the libretto and a topographical map of the Rhine River and environs. Kirschen lays out directions, distances and destinations gleaned from these many resources. The audience will follow Wotan and Alberich and other main Ring characters as they make their fortunes and suffer their misfortunes. We will examine the journeys of the treasures, weapons and other items. And we will see caves, forests and mountains along the way. Included in this presentation will be excerpts from the Solti Ring and the illustrations of Arthur Rackham.

Our speaker Martin Kirschen is a retired special education teacher, writer, speaker, east/west wellness facilitator and the publisher of his own opera education items (www.nibelungenterprises.com). Kirschen comes from a military family and after spending his boyhood  years in Germany, he has lived in New York and Los Angeles. Kirschen published his first Ring Family Tree in 1979 and his enterprise has grown to distribution of these works in German and French and he has created other items such as T-Shirts, placemats and other Ring items.

Martin Kirschen has made this presentation for the Wagner Society of Southern California and for the Wagner Society of New York. 

This event is free to Wagner Society of Northern California and $10 for non-members.