Event Review: Seminar on Parsifal at Catersfield
21 July 2001
'Parsifal the Crowning work of Wagner's Career'
Simon Williams Professor of Dramatic Art, University of California
at Santa Barbara
It is impossible to do justice to Professor Simon Williams' thought
provoking lectures on Parsifal held at Catersfield Guest House in
the beautiful lower Hunter Valley on Saturday 21 July. It is, nevertheless,
worth reporting that 30 plus members who attended considered themselves
suitably challenged by the lectures and certainly came away with new
insights into Wagner and this work in particular.
Professor Williams' thoughts on the issues including Parsifal as
drama or religious rite, the views on the essential nature of the
Knights of the Grail, the character of Kundry, the crisis of sexuality
in the nineteenth century as it applied to Parsifal, and so on, gave
participants much food for thought.
The lectures were not confined to Parsifal, the character or the
opera, and Professor Williams' elaboration of his four models of 'The
Hero' in Wagner's operas, the influence of the philosophers such as
Schopenhauer and Rousseau on Wagner, the importance of redemption
in Wagner's works for example were extremely interesting.
That this seminar followed an equally thought provoking lecture to
the Society on Lohengrin by Professor Williams on 15 July calls for
a special vote of thanks to our President for facilitating these two
events.
That the Society can allow access to lectures of the quality and
scope of these is illustrative of the ability of the Society to fulfil
its aim, inter alia of encouraging a wider understanding (of Wagner's)
work.
Certainly for those of us going this year to Bayreuth and/or Adelaide
Professor Williams' lectures will resonate in our minds
(Simon Williams is the author of German Actors of the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries and Shakespeare on the German Stage
1587 - 1914)
JOHN STUDDERT
23 JULY 2001
This Page was last updated on:
20-Oct-2004
© Wagner Society in NSW Inc 2004 |