Friday 23 July 2021

Another journey with Tristan and Isolde

Staring next Wednesday afternoon (UPDATE - now 4 August owing to an emergency hospital visit last week), I'm back on Zoom again along with anyone who cares to join me for ten glorious (I hope) two-hour sessions on Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. This course is under the auspices of the Wagner Society of Scotland, for whom I embarked on what should have been four weekend courses at beautiful Gartmore House in the Trossachs on the Ring. We managed Das Rheingold and Die Walküre - that was during a September heatwave, sun burning early morning mists away outside my bedroom window pictured below - 

then Covid struck, so Siegfried had to go online, and I followed up with Götterdämmerung later in 2020. We had hoped to return to live events this September, but apparently the booking for two options fell through. So here we are on Zoom once again, and in my experience it's been a great opportunity to welcome more special guests than we could have done live. On the Wagner front, I've welcomed John Tomlinson to talk about Wotan-as-Wanderer and then again about Hagen; Susan Bullock, Anne Evans and Richard Jones, in what turned out to be a fascinating three-way conversation; Linda Esther Gray (the greatest of all Isoldes? Discuss - we will, hopefully with her); and, belatedly, Jay Hunter Morris, perhaps the best Siegfried currently with us. Who knows who we'll get this time, probably not so easy as artists return to work? But I'm making enquiries. 

If you're interested, message me here with contact details; I won't publish them, but I shall respond. It's £100 for the course, which I think is a bargain at £10 per session (which may well be longer than two hours, dependig on interest). If you can't attend all or any of the classes, I can send out Zoom videos the day after.

2 comments:

Liam mansfield said...

BEST of Luck with your course.Liam
Good to see you back

David said...

Thanks, Liam. You should try it some time...