Richard Wagner and the ‘New World’
A live talk by Professor Rudolph Vaget.
Friends’ Meeting House, 6 Mount Street Manchester M2 5NS
Wednesday April 2nd at 19.oo
There is no admission fee for this event but donations would be much appreciated.
Wagner declared his intention to emigrate to the United States on three occasions (1874, 1877, 1880). This baffling biographical item has not received the attention that it calls for. My lecture examines Wagner’s plan to emigrate and to start a “New Bayreuth” on American soil. It clarifies the role of Wagner’s American dentist in that scheme, and sheds light on the three invitations he received to visit New York and the United States. What emerges is a new appreciation of Wagner’s lifelong interest in America which actually reaches back to his adolescence. It lasted to the end, rendering his dependance on royal patronage and king Ludwig II all the more fraught and problematic.
Hans Rudolf Vaget is professor emeritus of German studies and comparative literature at Smith, where he taught from 1967 to 2004. He received his academic training at the universities of Munich and Tübingen, the University of Wales at Cardiff and at Columbia University in New York. He has published widely in the field of German studies from the l8th century to the present, focusing primarily on Goethe, Wagner and Thomas Mann.
Aside from Smith, he has taught at the University of California, Irvine; Yale; Columbia; Princeton; University of Massachusetts Amherst; Middlebury College and Hamburg University. He is a co-founder of the Goethe Society of North America and its former president. He is one of the chief editors of the new edition of the works, letters and diaries of Thomas Mann. He is also one of the editors and co-founders of wagnerspectrum, a journal of Wagner Studies, which debuted in 2005.
