Simon Williams – "The Modernity of Wagner"

The Wagner Society welcomes a favorite speaker, Professor Simon Williams. Much of the scholarly discussion of Richard Wagner as a tragic dramatist focuses on the influence upon him of the great dramatists of the past and in his own time. However Wagner’s music drama can also be seen as the first iteration of a tragic vision that was to become central to the drama of the modern world. In this talk, Williams will explore that “modernity” and, in so doing, hopes to argue that Wagner is very much an artist for our own time, even an artist of our time. His talk will be accompanied by several music examples.

1:00 p.m. Saturday September 17, 2016

JCC-SF

3200 California Street (2nd Floor Gallanter Hall)

San Francisco, CA