The Arts Society West Wales: Composers, Kapelmeisters and Kaisers: a short history of German Opera

Lecture starts at 11am

While opera may have had its roots in the artistically fertile soil of Italy, it quickly became central to the music and cultural lives of the German speaking peoples. Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Wagner, Strauss, Schoenberg and Berg were all drawn to the Lyric theatre and all created masterpieces that are still heard regularly today. So impactful and so popular was opera in Germany and Austria that those countries are now the proud possessors of more than 100 opera houses between them. The works of the composers mentioned above not only challenged audiences and musicians alike, but set new standards in performance that did much to shape today's performance climate.

Born in Australia, Professor Raymond Holden AM studied at Sydney, Cologne and London and is both a critically acclaimed and a multi-award winning writer, conductor, broadcaster and lecturer. He has performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Emilia Romagna and the New Symphony Orchestra of London, and has been published regularly by Oxford, Cambridge and Yale University Presses, the Royal Academy of Music Press, Hans Schneider Verlag (Vienna) and by ICA, EMI and Warner Classics. Professor Holden has appeared on BBC Television and Radio, Servus TV (Germany), RAI Television and Radio, ABC Classic FM, 3MBS FM, Vision Australia Radio, SRF (Switzerland) and Classic FM (South Africa), and has spoken at many of the world’s leading music and literary festivals, universities, conservatoires and research institutes. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours List and is currently Emeritus Professor of Music at the Royal Academy of Music, London.

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