Recovered Voices: Staging Suppressed Opera of the Early 20th Century
Presenters
Page updated as of March 22, 2010.
Michael Beckerman
“Haas' Charlatan and Other Forecasts of Disaster”
Michael Beckerman is a scholar, lecturer and educator. He has published several books on Czech topics, including, most recently, New Worlds of Dvořák (W.W. Norton, 2003); Janáček and His World (Princeton, 2003); and Martinů's Mysterious Accident (Pendragon, 2007) and written articles on Beethoven, music and exile, Schubert, Vaughan Williams, “Gypsy” music, Mozart, Salamone Rossi, and film music. He is at present working on a book and documentary about the last composition written in the Terezín concentration camp by Gideon Klein. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, he has appeared numerous times on PBS' Live from Lincoln Center, and has lectured throughout North America, Europe and Asia. A recipient of the Janáček Medal from the Czech Ministry of Culture, he is also a laureate of the Czech Music Council and has twice received the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for his work on Dvořák. He is a co-founder of OREL and is currently Professor and Chair of Music at New York University.
Brigid Cohen
“Opera after the Bauhaus: Wolpe's Zeus und Elida and the Ethics of Montage”
Brigid Cohen teaches in the music department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research addresses twentieth-century avant-gardes, issues of migration and diaspora, cosmopolitanism theory, and intersections of music, the visual arts, and literature. Her book Modernism Untethered: Wolpe, Music, and the Avant-Garde Diaspora (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press) explores how dilemmas of migration and cultural plurality shaped modernist movements from the Bauhaus to the kibbutzim to bebop to Black Mountain College. She is also in the beginning stages of a new book project that broadly reframes the history and theory of musical modernism through a sustained focus on experiences of displacement and acts of cultural translation. Her research has been funded by the American Musicological Society, the DAAD, the Getty Research Institute, the Paul Sacher Foundation, the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is a 2010 recipient of the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin.
James Conlon
One of today's preeminent conductors, James Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire, and developed enduring relationships with many of the world's most prestigious symphony orchestras and opera houses. Since his New York Philharmonic debut in 1974, Mr. Conlon has appeared as guest conductor with virtually every major North American and European orchestra and has been a frequent guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera for over thirty years. Mr. Conlon is Music Director of Los Angeles Opera, Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the Cincinnati May Festival, where he celebrated his 30th Anniversary in May 2009. Mr. Conlon served as Principal Conductor of the Paris National Opera (1995-2004); General Music Director of the City of Cologne, Germany (1989-2002); and Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (1983-1991)...To continue reading, click here
Adrian Daub
“Total Work of Art, 'Degenerate' Artist and Ugly Detail: The Birthdays of the Infanta of Wilde, Schreker and Zemlinsky.”
Adrian Daub received his Ph.D. in May 2008 from the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation focused on philosophical approaches to marriage in German Idealism and German Romanticism (“Uncivil Unions—The Metaphysics of Marriage in German Idealism and Jena Romanticism, 1794-1801”). His recent publications include “'The Abyss of the Scream'- On the Music of Hermann Nitsch” (in a volume entitled Blood Orgies: Hermann Nitsch in America), “Adorno's Schreker—Charting the Self-Dissolution of the Distant Sound” (in Cambridge Opera Journal) and “'Donner à voir': The Logic of the Caption in Alexander Kluge's The Devil's Blind Spot and W.G. Sebald's Rings of Saturn” (in a volume entitled Searching for Sebald). A German-language monograph on cultural perceptions of four-hand piano music in 19th century Europe will be published this fall; Professor Daub is currently working on a book on German thought on marriage from Kant to Nietzsche.
Albrecht Dümling
“The ‘Entartete Musik’ Exhibition of Düsseldorf 1938—Intentions, Obstacles and Consequence”
Dr. Albrecht Dümling lives as a musicologist and music critic in Berlin. After twenty years as critic for the Berlin newspaper „Der Tagesspiegel“ (1978-1998), he now contributes to the “Neue Musik-Zeitung” and several radio programs. As a Getty Scholar he in 1989/90 created for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association an American version of the exhibition „Entartete Musik. A critical reconstruction” (Düsseldorf 1938/1988), followed by new versions in Spanish and German and the DECCA CD-series „Entartete Musik“. Since 1990 he has been chairman of „musica reanimata“, a Society for the Promotion of Composers persecuted by the Nazis. For these activities Dümling has been awarded the European Cultural Prize KAIROS, of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg. His earlier books focused on Arnold Schoenberg, Bertolt Brecht and Musical Performing Rights. Presently he is doing research on refugee musicians in Australia.
Peter Franklin
“Lost in Spaces: Recovering Schreker's Spectacular Voices”
Peter Franklin is Professor of Music at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Catherine's College. His research areas are Gustav Mahler and the post-romantic symphony, early twentieth-century Austrian and German opera (including Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker) and Hollywood film music (concentrating on European émigrés Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman and Max Steiner in the 1930s and '40s). Publications include the books Mahler. Symphony no.3 and The Life of Mahler, both for Cambridge University Press; his recent writing on Schreker includes a contribution to Musik des Aufbruchs. Franz Schreker. Grenzgänge/ Grenzklänge (a booklet associated with the 2004-5 exhibition Franz Schreker. Grenzgänge/ Grenzklänge at the Jüdische Museum der Stadt Wien), an essay on Die Gezeichneten in Nikolaus Bacht's Music, Theatre and Politics in Germany. 1848 to the Third Reich (2006) and a review of the Salzburg Festival production of the same opera in Opera Quarterly.
Martin Goldsmith
“The Inextinguishable Symphony ”
Martin Goldsmith is the author of “The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany.” Hailed by The Washington Post as “a literary journey reminiscent of Art Spiegelman's in Maus,” the book tells the riveting story of the Jewish Kulturbund, an all-Jewish performing arts ensemble maintained by the Nazis between 1933 and 1941, an ensemble that included Mr. Goldsmith's parents. Mr. Goldsmith's newest book, part of the “Turning Points” series published by John Wiley & Sons, is called “The Beatles Come to America.” Martin Goldsmith is also the author of six Composer Portraits that he has performed with conductor Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra in the Concert Hall of the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Hour-long biographies of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, and Copland, the Portraits attracted enthusiastic crowds to the Kennedy Center from 2003 to 2008, and furthered Mr. Goldsmith's reputation as one of America's foremost advocates for classical music. To continue reading, click here.
Michael Haas
“Hans Gál and his Sacred Duck”
This year Michael Haas has been awarded the City of Vienna's Theodor Koerner Prize for advancement of Arts and Sciences resulting from the Hanns Eisler exhibition in the Jewish Museum of Vienna. He was a guiding force behind Decca's groundbreaking “Entartete Musik” series, which has played an enormous role in the rediscovery of music suppressed during the Nazi years in Europe. With more than 20 years of experience as an executive and recording producer for both Universal Music Group's Decca/London and the Sony Classical labels. He was producer for Sir Georg Solti for over 10 years winning several Grammies, before leaving for Sony to work with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic as well as working in 1994 as Vice President of A&R in New York. He currently works independently, producing recordings and projects, in addition to maintaining a busy schedule of lectures, festivals and conferences. To read a full bio, click here.
Christopher Hailey
‘Ecco le plebi’: Schreker, his People, and the Ambivalence of Modernity
Musicologist Christopher Hailey, educated at Duke and Yale Universities, is an independent scholar specializing in twentieth-century music history. His many publications includes a biography of the Austrian opera composer Franz Schreker, editions of the correspondence between Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg, and between Paul Bekker and Franz Schreker, a translation of Theodor W. Adorno's biography of Berg, and several editions of scores by Berg and Schreker. Mr. Hailey is director of the Franz Schreker Foundation and from 1999-2003 was the visiting professor at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute in Vienna. During 2006/2007 he was a member of the Institute for Advance Study in Princeton, where he was researching a book on the history of Viennese musical modernism. He is scholar-in-residence for the 2010 Bard Music Festival, for which he has edited a companion volume, Alban Berg and his World.
Daniel Hope
British violinist Daniel Hope has toured the world as a virtuoso soloist for many years, and as the youngest ever member of the Beaux Arts Trio during its last six seasons. He is renowned for his musical versatility and creativity and for his dedication to humanitarian causes. Hope performs as soloist with the world's major orchestras and conductors, directs many ensembles from the violin, and plays chamber music in a wide variety of traditional and new venues. Born in South Africa and raised and educated in England, Hope earned degrees at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with renowned Russian pedagogue Zakhar Bron…To continue reading, click here
Ian Judge (Director, LA Opera's Die Gezeichneten)
Ian Judge first joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1975. His productions there include The Wizard of Oz, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, Twelfth Night, A Christmas Carol, The Relapse, Troilus and Cressida and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Other credits include The Rivals and King Lear at the Old Vic, Banana Ridge, One For The Pot and Peter Pan at the Shaw Festival in Canada and Macbeth for the Sydney Theatre Company. Opera repertoire includes Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Le Nozze di Figaro, Roméo et Juliette, Don Carlo and Tannhäuser (LA Opera), Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Sydney, Houston, Opera Pacific), Faust, The Merry Widow, Cav/Pag, La Belle Vivette, Don Quixote, Mefistofele (English National Opera), Der fliegende Holländer, Simon Boccanegra (Covent Garden), Simon Boccanegra (Washington, Dallas), Macbeth (Cologne) and Faust, Tosca, Macbeth, Boris Godunov, Acis and Galatea and Attila (Opera North), Norma (Glasgow, Graz), La Bohème (Mariinsky), The Mikado (Savoy Theatre); Salome (New York City Opera) and Falstaff (Châtelet, Paris). His work in musicals includes Merrily We Roll Along (Bloomsbury Theatre), The Swan Down Gloves and The Wizard of Oz (RSC), Oh Kay! (Chichester Festival Theatre), Bitter Sweet (Sadler's Wells, UK tour); A Little Night Music (Piccadilly Theatre, London), Show Boat (London Palladium, UK tour) and West Side Story (Australia, New Zealand). Recent work includes Roméo et Juliette in Chicago and the first production in nearly 50 years of Sir John in Love at English National Opera. He recently directed Der fliegende Holländer for the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. In 2009 he made his debut at the Canadian Opera Company with Simon Boccanegra (“Dora” Award nomination for Best Opera Production) and staged Tannhäuser at the Teatro Real in Madrid and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Britten Theatre in London.
Jeffrey Kahane
Equally at home at the keyboard or on the podium, Jeffrey Kahane has established an international reputation as a truly versatile artist, recognized by audiences around the world for his mastery of a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Gershwin, Golijov and John Adams. Since making his Carnegie Hall debut in 1983, Kahane has given recitals in many of the nation's major music centers including New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Atlanta. He regularly appears as soloist with leading orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus and is also a popular figure at summer festivals including Ravinia, Blossom, Caramoor, Mostly Mozart, Oregon Bach and the Hollywood Bowl. Kahane is equally well known for his collaborations with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, Joshua Bell and Thomas Quasthoff and regularly appears with the leading chamber ensembles…To continue reading, click here
David Levin
“The Imp of the Perverse? Alexander von Zemlinsky's Operatic World”
David J. Levin teaches in the Committee on Theater & Performance Studies, the Committee on Cinema & Media Studies, and the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago, where he also serves as Co-Director of the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH). Professor Levin's recent work focuses on the aesthetics and politics of performance in opera, theater, and cinema. His most recent book, Unsettling Opera was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2007; he is also the author of Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen: The Dramaturgy of Disavowal (Princeton University Press), and the editor of Opera Through Other Eyes (Stanford University Press). In addition to his academic work, Professor Levin has also worked extensively as a dramaturg for various opera houses in Germany and the United States and for William Forsythe's Frankfurt Ballet. In 2005, Levin assumed the Executive Editorship of The Opera Quarterly, published by Oxford University Press.
Ryan Minor
“Schlusschoral: History and Meaning in Ullmann and Weill”
Ryan Minor's research focuses primarily on the musical and political culture of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, with special emphasis on opera, choral music, and music's participation in the public sphere. He has published on Wagner, Liszt, and Brahms, and he recently co-edited a special issue of Opera Quarterly on Parsifal. His book Choral Fantasies: Music, Festivity, and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Germany is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. Minor is currently working on a project locating music and musical culture within discourses of vitalism at the fin-de-siècle. A recipient of awards from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, he is currently Assistant Professor of Music at SUNY Stony Brook.
Harvey Sachs
“Opera in Mussolini's Italy”
Harvey Sachs, writer and music historian, has published eight books — of which there are now more than fifty editions in fifteen languages — including the standard biographies of Arturo Toscanini and Arthur Rubinstein, a history (Music in Fascist Italy), two collections of essays on musical subjects (Virtuoso and Reflections on Toscanini), and, as co-author, the memoirs of Plácido Domingo (My First Forty Years) and Sir Georg Solti (Memoirs). His most recent published volume is The Letters of Arturo Toscanini, which he compiled, translated, and edited, and he recently completed a book — The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824 — scheduled for publication by Random House in June 2010. Sachs has written for the New Yorker, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Times Literary Supplement, La Stampa, and dozens of other newspapers and periodicals, as well as for the BBC, PBS, CBC (Canada), RAI (Italy), RSI (Switzerland), and other radio and television networks. He has lectured at approximately seventy North American and European universities and cultural institutions. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and he has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for 2010-2011.
Sigrid Weigel
Zemlinsky's Der Traumgörge—a Post-Wagnerian Pentecost Play, or: On the Emergence of a Pogrom from the Midst of a Christian Community
(Director of the Centre for Literature Research in Berlin).
Bret Werb
“We Will Never Die (1943): a Pageant to Save the Jews of Europe.”
Bret Werb has worked as music collection curator for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC since 1992. A contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies, Werb earned an M.A. in ethnomusicology at UCLA with a thesis on the Yiddish theater composer Joseph Rumshinsky and remains a Ph.D candidate at the same institution. Werb has programmed the museum's long-running chamber music recital series as well as researched and produced several CDs of period repertoire for the museum. The most recent recording, Aleksander Kulisiewicz: Ballads and Broadsides, features historic recordings from the museum's collection of Polish prisoners' songs from the Nazi camps. Werb has lectured widely on the Holocaust theme in music and has collaborated on numerous concert, recording, film and theater projects. He currently curates the online exhibition Music of the Holocaust (http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/music), showcasing the museum's music collection.