Wagner Society, WAGNERIANA. The Boston Wagner Society has posted several of my essays and my complete critical chronological anthology of Wagner’s writings and recorded remarks on their website: www.bostonwagnersociety.org. This anthology is more extensive that that published on this website in Appendix II on pages 1167-1450.
I wish also to pay tribute to various academics, and Wagner Society presidents and officers, who made it possible to present various aspects of my Wagner project in a series of lectures around the country. Dr. John Weinstock (Germanic Studies Dept.) and Dr. Tom Seung (Jesse H. Jones Regents Professor in Liberal Arts, Dept. of Philosophy), both of the University of Texas in Austin, graciously invited me in 2005 to present two lectures on my Ring interpretation to the faculty and students of the Germanic Studies, Philosophy, and Music Depts. I had the opportunity to teach one of Dr. Weinstock’s classes. Dr. Seung also did me the honor of critiquing my unpublished work on the Ring in the final pages of his 2006 book Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner: Their Spinozan Epics of Love and Power. You will find my review of his book on Amazon.com. Dr. Weinstock has also posted several of my essays and my critical chronological anthology of Richard Wagner’s writings and recorded remarks on his website devoted to Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung.
With respect to the various Wagner Societies, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Nathalie and Harry Wagner, President and Editor of the newsletter WAGNER NOTES, respectively, of the Wagner Society of New York, for providing me my first lecture opportunity in the early 90’s. Since then I presented a lecture at Southern Methodist University to the Wagner Society of Dallas in response to my invite by the founder, Virginia Abdo, multiple lectures for the Richard Wagner Society of Florida, hosted by the President Marita Rotella and her husband Dr. Richard Rotella, two lectures for the Boston Wagner Society (the latter of which was recorded for posterity on dvd by a cable tv station in Wellesley, MA) in response to the invitation of President and Founder Dalia Geffen, a lecture at George Washington University in Washington, DC, to the Wagner Society of Washington, DC, at the request of the Chairman, Jim Holman, and the President, Aurelius Fernandez, and finally, two lectures for the Washington National Wagner Society at the instance of the Founder and President, Janice Rosen, and her good friend – and stalwart Wagnerian - Justin Swain. I also wish to thank Bill Smith, President of the Wagner Society of America in Chicago, for bringing me up to Chicago some years ago to meet with various members of his Wagner club to discuss my work.
I wish to especially thank the co-founders of our Richard Wagner Society of Florida, Marie Jo Bell and Carmen Wagner. By creating this educational institution these two ladies have provided me with an immeasurably valuable forum for my efforts to disseminate my ideas and educate the world regarding the deeper meanings in Wagner’s art. Furthermore, our President Marita Rotella, and her husband Dr. Richard Rotella, who have graciously hosted the majority of our meetings since the society’s inception in 4/01, kept our society thriving for years through considerable personal expenditure in time, labor, and financing, without which I don’t believe our society could have survived.
Finally, I wish to mention a number of students of Wagner I have met at Wagner functions or online, whose discussions with me regarding my hypotheses have been quite helpful in my effort to sharpen my arguments. These include Timothy Fisher, Dr. Kevin Hill, Albert Reiner, Laon (New Zealand), Cruz Tijerina, Jerry Hashimoto, Glen Wolfson, Kimberly Cornish, Peter Cresswell, Michael Mountain, A.C. Douglas, Anselm,
