Speaking

Paul Thomason Lecture & Teaching

  • 2006 Pre­sent­ed a Trib­ute to Bir­git Nils­son for the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Wag­n­er Soci­ety.
  • 2006 Lec­tured on Tris­tan und Isol­de as part of an all-day sym­po­sium of the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Wag­n­er Soci­ety.
  • Pre­sent­ed the Kennedy Cen­ter Opera Insight’s lec­ture on Die Walküre (2003) and inter­viewed Alan Held who was appear­ing as Wotan in the Wash­ing­ton Nation­al Opera’s per­for­mances of Die Walküre.
  • Lec­tured on The Bar­ber of Seville for the San Fran­cis­co Opera Guild (2003) through­out the Bay Area.
  • 1999 Inter­viewed sopra­nos Hilde­gard Behrens, Bar­bara Bon­ney, and Car­ol Vaness for a three-evening series called In Per­for­mance for the San Fran­cis­co Per­form­ing Arts Library and Muse­um.
  • 1992 – 99 taught numer­ous class­es at the San Fran­cis­co Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music Exten­sion Divi­sion, among them: How to Lis­ten to Opera (giv­en numer­ous times); The Opera of Richard Strauss; Bel Can­to Opera; The Faust Leg­end in Opera; Beau­mar­chais in Opera; Shake­speare in Opera, etc.
  • Gave per­for­mance talks at the Stern Grove Fes­ti­val in SF on Verdi’s Fal­staff and Mozart’s The Mag­ic Flute.
  • Fre­quent­ly pre­sent­ed pre-cur­tain talks for the San Fran­cis­co Opera. Among the operas were Der Rosenkava­lier (Strauss), The Fiery Angel (Prokofiev), Anna Bole­na (Donizetti), I Puri­tani (Belli­ni), Lulu (Berg), Lohen­grin (Wag­n­er), Tannhäuser (Wag­n­er), Die Walküre (Wag­n­er), I Vespri Sicil­iani (Ver­di), Rigo­let­to (Ver­di), Ara­bel­la (Strauss).
  • Fre­quent­ly pre­sent­ed pre-cur­tain talks for the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny.