The Wagner and Adaptation organising team wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute, the Faculty of Music, the Centre for Comparative Literature, the Department of English, the Munk School of Global Affairs, and the German Department, and of the Canadian Opera Company, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the German Consulate. Special thanks are owed to Janice Gross Stein (Director, Munk School of Global Affairs), Don McLean (Dean, Faculty of Music), Robert Gibbs (Director, Jackman Humanities Institute), Alan Bewell (Chair, Department of English), Neil ten Kortenaar (Director, Centre for Comparative Literature), Brian Corman (Dean, School of Graduate Studies), John Zilcosky (Chair, German Department), Pia Kleber (Professor of Drama, Wagner and University College), Kim Yates (Associate Director, Jackman Humanities Institute), Gianmarco Segato (Canadian Opera Company), and Sabine Sparwasser (German Consul General). Adaptation Thank you, finally, to all our distinguished presenters for their vital An International Symposium contributions to this event. The Wagner and Adaptation Symposium Team: Caryl Clark (Music), Linda Hutcheon (English and Comparative Literature), Sherry Lee (Music), and Katherine Larson (English), University of Toronto. 31 January - 2 February 2013 Graduate Student Assistants: UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Julia Dolman, Hilary Donaldson, Rebekah Lobosco, and Sean Bellaviti http://www.operaexchange.net/wagner-and-adaptation Wagner and Adaptation – University of Toronto, 31 January – 2 February 2013 Wagner and Adaptation: An International Symposium University of Toronto, 31 January – 2 February 2013 HONOURING LINDA HUTCHEON – PROGRAMME – THURSDAY AFTERNOON, 31 JANUARY JACKMAN HUMANITIES BUILDING, ROOM 100A 3:30 p.m. Welcome and Introduction Robert Gibbs, Director, Jackman Humanities Institute 3:45 p.m. Michael P. Steinberg (Brown University) “Reflections on Dramaturgical Work for the La Scala / Berlin Ring, 2010 – 2013” 5:00 p.m. Reception hosted by the Faculty of Music The participants of the Wagner and Adapation symposium have Graduate Colloquium Series gathered to celebrate our esteemed colleague, University Professor Linda Hutcheon, for her outstanding scholarly and public contributions to our understanding of the processes and practices of adaptation, and of opera in dialogue and performance. Wagner and Adaptation – University of Toronto, 31 January – 2 February 2013 Wagner and Adaptation: An International Symposium FRIDAY MORNING, 1 FEBRUARY In Act I of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the title characters share a drink, and unwittingly alter the course of both their own FACULTY OF MUSIC, WALTER HALL destinies and those of their respective nations. The infamous love potion, secretly substituted for a death draught, turns out to be both deceptive and revelatory, bringing to the surface a long-hidden 9:15 a.m. Welcome connection between two members of rival cultures, and transforming Don McLean, Dean, Faculty of Music it into a consuming desire. Tristan and Isolde’s transformative potion is an analogue of the 9:20 a.m. Richard Leppert (University of Minnesota) continual and multifarious processes of adaptation of the works of “Operatic-Cinematic Dream Notes” Wagner, the transformative artist par excellence of the nineteenth century, around which our symposium revolves. Wagner’s own 1865 Chair: Michael Hutcheon adaptation of the medieval legend of Tristan and Iseut was itself arguably the catalyst for the modern phenomenon of adaptive operatic staging practices: in February 1903, Gustav Mahler and Alfred Roller 10:30 a.m. Coffee break produced a Tristan in Vienna that transformed the tradition-bound approach to the work with a new, simplified staging and novel, hosted by the Faculty of Music coloured-electrical lighting techniques. Now in 2013, 110 years after this adaptive landmark and 200 years after Wagner’s own birth, our symposium coincides with the Canadian Opera Company’s 11:00 a.m. Brian Kane (Yale University) presentation of Bill Viola and Peter Sellars’ acclaimed Tristan “Acousmatic Phantasmagoria and the Problem of Project, a multimedia art piece whose combination of larger-than-life Techné” video imagery with live performance is an extraordinary act of adaptation that has resonated internationally. 11:45 a.m. Sander Gilman (Emory University) Wagner and Adaptation brings together a stellar international lineup “1942: Opera Adaptations in Opera and Beyond” of participants across multiple disciplines, to interrogate from a myriad of perspectives the processes of performative adaptation, from the staged to the filmic and beyond, that have accrued to Wagner’s Chair: Sherry Lee oeuvre. This symposium marks both the Wagner bicentenary and the tenth year since Linda Hutcheon, together with Caryl Clark, launched the Opera Exchange, a series of interdisciplinary symposia that has 12:30 p.m. Lunch break sustained a decade-long connection between the University, the performing arts community, and the opera-loving public. Wagner and Adaptation – Symposium Programme University of Toronto, 31 January – 2 February 2013 His articles have been published in The Cambridge Opera Journal, The Wagner Journal, The Opera Quarterly, and numerous collections about opera and musical theatre. FRIDAY AFTERNOON, 1 FEBRUARY Bettina Brandl-Risi studies subjects such as FACULTY OF MUSIC, WALTER HALL performativity and virtuosity, image and movement in contemporary performance, and theatricality and visual mises en scène at the 2:30 p.m. Ryan Minor (Stony Brook University) intersections of literature, theatre and the fine “Tannhäuser contra Wagner, or the Pitfalls of arts. Her research interests also include concepts Operatic Adaptation” of participation and audience, as well as theories and histories of reading from 1800 to today. 3:15 p.m. David Levin (University of Chicago) and Presently a professor of performance and Mary Ann Smart (University of California Berkeley) contemporary theatre in the Institute for Theatre and Media Studies at “Provocative Restagings of Wagner” the Universität Erlangen, she has also served as a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, Brown University, and Yale University. Chair: Caryl Clark, Music, U of T Brandl-Risi is the author of BilderSzenen:Tableaux vivants zwischen Bildender Kunst, Theater und Literatur im 19. Jahrhundert, and her articles appear in numerous anthologies and journals devoted to theatre and performance studies. 4:15 p.m. Coffee break hosted by the Faculty of Music 4:45 p.m. John Deathridge (King’s College London) “Waiting for Wagner” Chair: Steven Vande Moortele, Music, U of T Wagner and Adaptation – Symposium Programme University of Toronto, 31 January – 2 February 2013 SATURDAY MORNING SATURDAY MORNING, 2 FEBRUARY Clemens Risi: “Performing Wagner for the 21st Century” FACULTY OF MUSIC, WALTER HALL Wagner’s works have long been the focus of questions concerning the possibilities, limits and necessity of the director’s role in opera 9:00 a.m. Welcome and Introduction productions. I will discuss recent developments in staging Wagner at Katherine Larson, English, U of T the Bayreuther Festspiele, including Katharina Wagner’s 2007 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Hans Neuenfels’ 2010 Lohengrin, and Sebastian Baumgarten’s 2011 Tannhäuser. All of these productions 9:15 a.m. Clemens Risi (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) could be described as “Regietheater” (“director's theater”), a “Performing Wagner for the 21st Century” performance practice that retains the musical dramaturgy of the work while radically questioning, re-examining and re-contextualising the layers of meaning in an opera. These productions also mark new steps 10:00 a.m. Christopher Mokrzewski, piano (Toronto) in the staging practice of Wagner’s oeuvre, going beyond questions of Performance of Franz Liszt’s transcription of the the interpretation of a single work. How does a well-known opera Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde react under the conditions of a newly established situation as in a laboratory? 10:30 a.m. Coffee Break Clemens Risi is professor of performance hosted by the Faculty of Music and contemporary theatre in the Institute for Theatre and Media Studies at the Universität Erlangen. His research interests include 11:00 a.m. In conversation: opera and musical theatre from the 17thC to Linda Hutcheon (English and Comparative the present, with emphasis on performativity Literature, University of Toronto), and theatricality, affect and emotion in Bettina Brandl-Risi (Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), music, theater, and opera, the experience of Michael Baba (Tristan – Canadian Opera Company), rhythm and time, and audiovisual perception. and Margaret Jane Wray (Isolde – Canadian Opera Author of Auf dem Weg zu einem Company) italienischen Musikdrama, he has also co- edited several collections, including, most recently, in 2011, Power, Powerlessness, Chance: Performance Practice, Interpretation and Reception in the Musical Theatre of the 19th Century and the Present and a special edition of Opera Quarterly entitled Opera in Transition. Wagner and Adaptation – Symposium Programme University of Toronto, 31 January – 2 February 2013 John Deathridge: “Waiting for Wagner” SPEAKERS Reluctant musicology, radical philosophy, and a fraught legacy are still playing their role in creating debates about Wagner that are THURSDAY AFTERNOON largely inchoate. This paper considers whether aspects of the discourse can become an ‘event’ (Badiou),