Each of these works presents a very different aspect of Wagner's thought and creative process. Each indicates the diversity of intellectual and emotional responses reflected in his works, whether dark, light, mystical, historical or societal - and always beyond straightforward concepts of good and evil.
Tristan and Die Meistersinger especially present an absorbing set of antonyms and polarities that capture two completely opposed ways of looking at human experience: the issues of life and love explored in terms of the gloom of an intangible Celtic mythology and the exuberant realism of an historical reflection of 16th-century Nuremberg, with its various guilds, and clash of late Medieval and Renaissance values. Both operas create artistic worlds of detailed and sustained imagery, symbolism and philosophical implication that both contradict and reflect each other.
Course programme
Friday 8 January 2016
Please plan to arrive between 16:30 and 18:30. You can meet other course members in the bar which opens at 18:15. Tea and coffee making facilities are available in the study bedrooms.
19:00 Dinner
20:30 Ideas, Symbols and Form in the Operas of Richard Wagner
22:00 Terrace bar open for informal discussion
Saturday 9 January 2016
07:30 Breakfast
09:00 Celtic Twilight: the Will, Instinct, Love and Death in Tristan und Isolde
10:30 Coffee
11:00 The Light of Reformation Reason: Bürgerlichkeit and Integration in Die Meistersinger
12:30 Free
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Free
16:00 Tea
16:30 Woodland Shadows: Heroism and Romance Fulfilment in Siegfried
18:30 Dinner
20:00 The Dusk of Divinity and New Fires of Creation in Götterdämmerung
21:30 Terrace bar open for informal discussion
Sunday 10 January 2016
07:30 Breakfast
09:00 Mystical Illumination: Renunciation or Transformation in Parsifal?
10:30 Coffee
11:00 Conclusion: Review and Reassessment
12:30 Free
12:45 Lunch
The course will disperse after lunch.
