Author Larry Wolff – In The Shadow of the Empress

HERE IS THE LINK TO AN ARCHIVAL RECORDING ON THIS EVENT: https://youtu.be/UU3uAEVw4-g

As the Bay Area braces for the San Francisco Opera’s production of Strauss’ opera Die Frau Ohne Schatten, The Wagner Society welcomes renowned author Larry Wolff. Wolff will discuss his new book, “The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy”. This  book explores how the changing circumstances of politics and society transformed the Strauss/von Hofmannsthal opera and its cultural meanings before, during, and after the First World War. The influence of Wagner’s music on Strauss’s style was to be profound, but at first his musically conservative father forbade him to study it. Indeed, in the Strauss household, the music of Richard Wagner was viewed with deep suspicion, and it was not until the age of 16 that Strauss was able to obtain a score of Tristan und Isolde. Die Frau Ohne Schatten has not been performed in San Francisco since 1990. This webinar will help us to understand this monumental work.

Larry Wolff is Silver Professor in the Department of History at New York University. His books with Stanford University Press include “Inventing Eastern Europe”, “Venice and the Slavs”, “The Idea of Galicia”, “The Singing Turk”, and “Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe”.
WSNC will convene at an earlier time as our speaker is based on the East Coast.