Bayreuth, A History with Emma Popek

HERE IS AN ARCHIVAL VIDEO OF THIS EVENT:  https://youtu.be/0aZ9G6X549Q       

As Wagnerians, we are drawn to the Bayreuth Festival to see innovative opera productions and enjoy its special atmosphere. For us it is a destination, a Wagnerian Mecca. Bayreuth, however, existed long before Richard Wagner put it on the map and made it famous. This sleepy Bavarian town located on the crossroads of Central Europe has an unexpectedly interesting history starting from its obscure origins in the Middle Ages to the traumatic events of the 20th century. This talk will present Bayreuth as a place where significant events of the broader European history took place and shaped it to what it is today.

Emma Popek is a retired analytical chemist, environmental technical and quality assurance manager, and author of an internationally-acknowledged textbook on environmental data collection and analysis. In addition to music, her lifelong passion is Classical literature and history. In retirement she applied her analytical skills and power of deduction to Classics and comparative literature. In 2021, she organized a Zoom conference, Symposium Peregrinum, for international Greco-Roman scholars where she gave a talk titled “A Journey of a Hero—Achilles, Siegmund, and Choices They Make”. The same year she gave a presentation to the Classical Association of the Pacific Northwest titled “The Intersection of Classics and Late Romanticism—Homer, Ovid, and Richard Wagner”. Emma is a WSNC Board Member and the WSNC Treasurer.