Wagner and Revolution
John Payne, a Wagner enthusiast for many years and currently the Chair of our Society, says: ‘The talk I’m giving is not an academic study, though it does make use of a number of different studies and I will quickly allude to them at the end of the talk. Rather it is a summary for the interested lay person of issues around this subject . There will be three parts to the talk:
- Wagner’s own engagement with the concept of revolution,
- Wagner’s personal history of revolutionary activity and how far that history influenced his operas
- Wagner’s operas and life and their impact on revolutionaries of all persuasions’