How does an elderly Doctor Faust turn into real-estate agent/baseball star? This illustrated talk will trace the sequence of Faust stories from its first appearance in 1587. We will focus on Goethe's Faust, Gounod's popular opera, and Murnau's classic film version, but touch on many others along the way. Learn about the real Dr. Faust, about the strange role this figure has played in religion and politics, about how the damnation of this tragic scholar became the most popular love story of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, about why a spoof of this figure would still appeal to an American audience in 1955, and to us today.
Jane K. Brown is Joff Hanauer Distinguished Professor for Western Civilization at the University of Washington and former president of the Goethe Society of North America. Best known for her work on Goethe's Faust, her most recent book is The Persistence of llegory: Drama and Neoclassicism from Shakespeare to Wagner (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). She has just competed a book on Goethe and psychoanalysis, and has also published essays on Mozart and Schubert. She teaches courses in German Literature, Comparative Literature, including one on pacts with the devil in literature, opera, and film.
Join us for a trip back to the 1950s, before the rock ’n roll revolution, a time when Rosemary Clooney and Eddie Fisher dominated the music charts, movies grew wider, TV invaded the home, and musicals like Damn Yankees brought the sound of the Hit Parade to Broadway. 5th Avenue Artistic and Music Associate Albert Evans and his musical guests serve up insight and entertainment in a Show Talk you won’t want to miss. Come on-a our house!
Your host, Albert Evans, is a composer (Off-Broadway hits Pageant and Nite Club Confidential, The 5th Avenue’s Yankee Doodle Dandy), lyricist (New York City Opera’s Merry Widow), as well as dramaturg, vocal coach and music director at The 5th Avenue Theatre. His recent musical, Rosie the Riveter, written with playwright Stephanie Timm for The 5th Theatre’s Adventure Musical Theater Touring Company, was on the road last spring, entertaining and educating grade school and middle school students throughout the northwest.