Lecture by Mike Ashman, opera director and music historian, on ‘Wagner and Modern Productions’.
To put his new music dramas onstage, Wagner needed to invent a role in the theatre that hardly existed at the time – the opera director. In so doing, he helped return opera to being real theatre. His successors have taken up the challenge. New Wagner productions by directors such as Wieland Wagner, Patrice Chéreau, Ruth Berghaus, David Alden, Richard Jones and Keith Warner continue to lead the way in theatrical innovation.