Lectures

Daniel Snowman is a frequent speaker for a number of British arts festivals, cultural organisations, luncheon clubs, NADFAS (National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies) etc, and in a typical year delivers some 40-50 illustrated talks and lectures in the UK and abroad.

Highlights this year include

Public interview with Daniel Barenboim at the Royal Academy of Music (Feb 3)
'Introduction to Opera’ day at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Feb 20)
Annual Fellows’ Lecture at Institute of Historical Research, University of London (June 1)
Paper to the 2010 Royal Musical Association conference (July 15)
Public Lectures on the Social History of Opera at the Royal Academy of Music (monthly, from Sept 28)

Principal Lecture topics for 2010/11

The Gilded Stage: A Social and Cultural History of Opera

In Mozart's day, who would have known who he was, and how? Why did the 'prima donna' get her fiery reputation? Which have been better for opera: dictatorships or democracies? Has opera ever been truly self-financing? When did opera audiences begin to turn up on time and remain quiet during performances? And how did a supposedly 'elitist' art form take root in such egalitarian societies as Australia and the USA?

These are some of the questions addressed in a richly illustrated Lecture about the history of an art form that incorporates all the others. From the birth of opera in late Renaissance Italy we move to Louis XIV’s Versailles, Handel’s London, Mozart’s Vienna, Verdi’s Italy, Wagner’s Germany, Gilded Age America and the world-wide spread of opera in the 20thC. The Lecture concentrates on the 'demand' rather than the 'supply', and considers eg: patronage of the arts, the changing nature of the operatic professions, opera and politics, theatrical architecture and stage design, and the impact of new technologies from gaslight to digital downloads. By the 21stC, opera had become truly global in its appeal. Yet, with the core repertoire seeming to slip into an ever-receding past and the world plunged into economc recession, the question must be addressed: does opera have a future?

Verdi and Victoria: National Icons

Queen Victoria and Giuseppe Verdi died within a week of each other in January 1901, two octogenarians widely revered as the embodiments of their respective nations. They had much in common: Victoria loved music and opera, while Verdi cared deeply about the politics of Italian unification. Each achieved early celebrity, later ‘retiring’ from the public eye (thereby attracting some resentment) before becoming a national treasure once again in old age.

Both became encrusted in layers of mythology, during their lifetimes and thereafter, as British and Italians alike refashioned their past in the service of an ever-shifting present. Drawing on a rich multiplicity of images, this Lecture examines the changing iconography of the two ‘V’s’ against the background of the wider cultural history of their respective nations.

The Hitler Emigrés

What do these have in common? The Penguin Pool at London Zoo; the Glyndebourne and Edinburgh Festivals; the art publishers Phaidon and Thames & Hudson; the cartoon character "Supermac"; The Buildings of England; the film The Red Shoes; the Amadeus Quartet.

Each was created by émigrés from Central Europe who, escaping the shadow of Nazism, found refuge in Britain. Artists and architects, film makers and philosophers, musicians and publishers, historians, psychologists and scientists - all brought something of their continental legacy to Britain. Their collective talent was enormous and their influence far in excess of their numbers. The Lecture is richly illustrated: a colourful and provocative introduction to the art and culture of our own lifetimes.