Thursday, January 8, 2009



Puccini Madame Butterfly, Viss d'arte Downloads

Download Puccini's Madame Butterfly (Che tua madre dovra, with the Delphi Ensemble) and Tosca: Vissi d'arte (with Peter Nilsson at the piano).

To download files, Right click on the link and click on "save as"

To register for The Passion's of Puccini Lecture-Performance, contact the UCT EMS Office.

Giacomo Puccini was the most important composer of Italian opera after Verdi. He wrote in the verismo style, a counterpart to the movement of Realism in literature and a trend that favored subjects and characters from everyday life for opera. On his often commonplace settings Puccini lavished memorable melodies and lush orchestration. It was around the turn of the twentieth century that he reached his artistic zenith, composing in succession his three most popular and effective operas, La Bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly.

Recreation of Chris Barnard's heart Transplant



Recreation of Christian Barnard's famous December 3, 1967 first Human Heart Transplant performed on Louis Washkansky at Groote Schuur Hospital. Created by Animo Venice High School students Zach Manpearl, Rex Mulvaney, Luis Barrara, and Jose Romero.

Groote Schuur Hospital (also known as "GSH" or, colloquially, "Grotties") is a large, government-funded, teaching hospital situated on the slopes of Devil's Peak in the city of Cape Town, South Africa. It was founded in 1938 and is famous for being the institution where the first human heart transplant took place, conducted by University of Cape Town-educated surgeon Christiaan Barnard on the patient Louis Washkansky.

Groote Schuur is the chief academic hospital of the University of Cape Town's medical school, providing tertiary care and instruction in all the major branches of medicine. The hospital underwent major extension in 1984 when two new wings were added; the old main building now mainly houses several academic clinical departments as well as a museum about the first heart transplant.

The hospital is an internationally-acclaimed research institution and is world-renowned for its trauma unit, anaesthesiology and internal medicine departments. Groote Schuur attracts many visiting medical students, residents and specialists each year who come to gain experience in various fields. As at December 2006 the hospital employed over 500 doctors, 1300 nurses and 250 allied health professionals.

Groote Schuur is Dutch for 'Great Barn' and is named after the original Groote Schuur estate laid out by Dutch settlers when the city of Cape Town was founded in the 17th Century.


To attend the lecture series Groote Schuur 1938 - 2008: Historical Perspectives contact the UCT EMS office.

Neo Muyanga Video



Neo Muyanga will be giving the lecture A-Capella Music of South Africa. To register for the course contact the EMS Office

SS Course 2009: The Liberal Predicament

Course 223
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 11.15 am
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

The Liberal Predicament
Presented by Dr Kenneth Hughes, Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town

With the fall of communism and the fraying of conservatism, it seems that the only one of the three traditional major Western political philosophies left standing is liberalism. Yet, in many parts of the world, liberalism is also not in good shape. Was it ever different? The great liberal thinkers were often ‘men in dark times’. This course will attempt to throw some light on the liberal predicament by sketching aspects of the history of liberal thought and the development of liberal politics in a number of different countries.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. From Locke to The Federalist: liberalism and the Enlightenment in the 18th century.
  2. de Tocqueville to Halévy: liberalism under the shadow of the French Revolution.
  3. Max Weber and the tragedy of Germany’s lost liberalism.
  4. Liberalism takes wings: Scandinavia, Italy, Spain and the Americas.
  5. Dilemmas of contemporary liberalism: liberalism, socialism and nationalism at home and abroad.
Recommended reading
  • da Ruggiero, G. History of European Liberalism. Translated by Collingwood, R.G. Beacon Press, 1964.
  • Brogan, H. Alexis de Tocqueville. Profile, 2006.
  • Stern, F. The Failure of Illiberalism. Columbia University Press, 1992.
  • Merquior, J.G. Liberalism, Old and New. Twayne Publishers, 1991.
  • Lipton, M. Liberals, Marxists and Nationalists. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
  • de Tocqueville, A. The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution. Translated [from the French] by Stuart Gilbert; with an introduction by Hugh Brogan. Fontana, 1966.

SS Course 2009: From Bismarck to Hitler: The Rise and Fall of a Superpower

Course 211
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 9.15 am
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

From Bismarck to Hitler: The Rise and Fall of a Superpower
Presented by Christopher Danziger, formerly at UCT and Durham, now freelance lecturer at Oxford and Warwick, United Kingdom

Germany is widely considered the most prosperous state in Europe. In the space of 30 years it twice took on and almost defeated the whole world. Yet the reality is that in 1865, Germany, later to be considered a superpower, was a powerless collection of small states. In 1945 it was shattered and divided into four zones of occupation. The period of German paramount power lasted for less than 80 years. Why did such a giant lie sleeping for so long? And why was such a giant so comprehensively slain? Indeed, has the giant been slain, or is it merely lying dormant?
This course aims to familiarise students with the creation of a German national state in the 1860s, and its attempt to dominate the world between 1914 and 1945. Students will be encouraged to question what constitutes a superpower and to decide what, if any, are its limits.

LECTURE TITLES

  1. Before Bismarck: political powerlessness.
  2. Bismarck and the creation of a superpower.
  3. From Bismarck to Versailles: testing the limits.
  4. The Weimar Republic: acceptance and denial.
  5. Hitler: the shattering of an illusion.

Recommended reading

  • Carr, W. A History of Germany 1818–1990. Hodder, 1991.
  • Craig, G. Germany 1866–1945. Oxford University Press, 1980.
  • Kershaw, I. Hitler: Profiles of Power. Longmans, 2000. (Or any other book by Iain Kershaw.)
  • Taylor, A.J.P. Bismarck. Hamish Hamilton, 1985.

SS Course 2009: Recent Problems in Nuclear Non-Proliferation

Course 192
Date: Wednesday 21 January
Time: 1.00 pm
Full Price: R54,00 Staff: R27,00 Reduced: R14,00
***Tickets are on sale at the door only if seats are available: R60,00; staff & reduced (on production of cards): R32,00.

Recent Problems in Nuclear Non-Profileration
Presented by David Wolfe, Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico and Director, Oppenheimer Institute for Science and International Co-operation.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was signed 40 years ago by over 170 nations. It requires adherence to a basic set of rules designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. It requires the five nations who have weapons (the USA, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China) to reduce their numbers and eventually disarm. Further, it requires non-weapons states to permit United Nations access to all sites and it expects access to information where any fissionable material is used, such as in reactors. Although it is not perfect, the treaty has worked relatively well in the past. Changes and updates are now urgently needed.

This lunch-time lecture aims to convince students of the severe threat to humankind that nuclear weapons represent. It will discuss their dangers, the advantages and disadvantages of the NPT, and the ease of constructing a weapon given the correct material. Since gaining access to fissile material is a core concern, it will explore the problems of enrichment of uranium, using Iran as an example.

SS Course 2009: The Road to the 2009 General Election: Economic Policy and the Party System

Course 191
Date: Tuesday 20 January
Time: 1.00 pm
Full Price: R54,00 Staff: R27,00 Reduced: R14,00
***Tickets are on sale at the door only if seats are available: R60,00; staff & reduced (on production of cards): R32,00.

The Road to the 2009 General Election: Economic Policy and the Party System
Presented by Zwelethu Jolobe, Department of Political Studies, University of Cape Town

By definition, political transitions are moments of uncertainty. Whether they involve regime change, intra-party succession, or occur at the end of electoral cycles, they enable new political interests and ideas to contest existing interests. They can either be incubators for new policy ideas and visions for the future, or they can confirm existing perspectives and policies. The ANC’s Polokwane conference was an intra-party transition on the eve of South Africa’s fourth post-1994 electoral cycle. While the election of Jacob Zuma as party president arguably created a vacuum in national government leadership, a key question is whether this has set the stage for changes in economic policy. Markets continue to speculate whether Trevor Manuel and Tito Mboweni’s market-friendly policies could be replaced by COSATU and SACP interests, given the political capital the alliance invested in the Polokwane rebellion. Could this herald a ‘decisive shift to the left’?


This lunch-time lecture will analyse the main trends in electoral policy-making since 1994 and will examine whether Zuma’s victory at Polokwane signifies the development of a new economic programme favouring the ANC’s alliance partners. It will conclude by sketching a possible scenario for the post-2009 era.

SS Course 2009: Italy in the Contemporary World

Course 141
Date: 19–23 January
Time: 6.00 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00


Italy in the Contemporary World
Presented by Paolo Bernardini, Professor, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria Como, Italy, Director of Boston University Centre for Italian and European Studies, USA


Italy is currently experiencing a political, economic and cultural crisis. The new Berlusconi government, a centre-right coalition backed by the autonomist Lega Nord party, faces zero economic growth, a static population, and a perceived decline in Italy’s prestige and power in comparison with other European Union (EU) states, including new entries. Many Italians, especially the well-educated, have become emigrants, and there is concern for Italy’s future ability to maintain its status in the European Union, despite retaining some of its cultural magnetism. The gulf between the north and south of the country is once again widening, so that there are at least ‘two Italys’, one still relatively well off (Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and to a certain extent Piedmont) with all the rest close to recession. Italy also has to deal with the social complexity of absorbing immigrants from poorer non-EU countries, and its recent handling of migrants and refugees has incurred internal and international criticism as well as support.

This course will analyse Italy’s current social, political and economic situation and role in the world as well as its future prospects.

LECTURE TITLES

  1. Modern Italy: the historical background.
  2. Italy in 2009: the political trends.
  3. Economic crisis.
  4. The failure of education, university and research.
  5. Options for the future: federalism, regional independence, centralisation.

SS Course 2009: Lost Voices: South Africa's History through the Words of its People

Course 132
Date: 19–23 January
Time: 3.30 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

"Lost Voices": South Africa's History through the Words of its People
Co-ordinated by Dr Elizabeth van Heyningen, Honorary Research Associate, Department of History, UCT

This course aims to bring to life some of South Africa’s vibrant history through the words of selected historical figures, many of whom have been unknown until recently. It will draw attention to the voices of slaves; to Le Vaillant, a man of the Enlightenment; to Wauchope, a Xhosa poet; to Jane Waterston, South Africa’s first acknowledged woman doctor; and to a Canadian soldier in the South African War. These intriguing perspectives, drawn from original historical sources and published by the Van Riebeeck Society, will help to illuminate South Africa’s complex society.

From its inception 90 years ago, the Van Riebeeck Society has published readable primary documents on a wide range of topics including those in discussion in this course. As far back as 1919, the historian W.M. Macmillan reflected that these publications provided an ‘atmosphere’ lacking in official documents. In the 21st century the Society aims to broaden its focus to embrace many more once silent and silenced voices.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. Slave voices. Gerald Groenewald, University of Johannesburg
  2. A Frenchman of the Enlightenment explores the Cape: Le Vaillant’s travels. Prof I Glenn, Centre for Film and Media Studies, UCT
  3. Isaac Williams Wauchope, Xhosa linguist and poet. Dr A Nyamende, School of Languages and Literatures, UCT
  4. Jane Elizabeth Waterston, missionary, teacher and pioneering doctor. Dr E van Heyningen
  5. A Canadian horseman in the South African War. Prof A Morris, Department of Human Biology, UCT

    Recommended reading
  • Worden, N. & Groenewald, G. (Eds). Trials of Slavery. VRS, 2005.
  • Glenn, I. (Ed) Francois Le Vaillant. Travels into the Interior of Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. VRS,2005.
  • Opland, J. & Nyamende, A. (Eds). Isaac Williams Wauchope. Selected writings. VRS, 2008.
  • Bean, L. & Van Heyningen, E. The Letters of Jane Elizabeth Waterston, 1866–1905. VRS, Cape Town, 1995.
  • Morris, A.G. A Canadian Mounted Rifleman at War, 1899–1902. The Reminiscences of A.E Hilder. VRS, 2000.

SS Course 2009: Groote Schuur Hospital: Historical Perspectives

Course 123
Date: 19–23 January
Time: 11.15 am
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

Groote Schuur Hospital 1938 - 2008: Historical Perspectives
Presented by Professor Howard Phillips, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town and Professor Anne Digby, Oxford Brookes University

This illustrated course will provide an overview of the rich history of Groote Schuur Hospital, South Africa’s premier public hospital, using contemporary photographs, sketches, cartoons and film footage.

It will examine the four main phases of the history of the hospital, focusing on its construction, operation, ethos and people. Among the particular issues that will be discussed is why the hospital was built on the slopes of Table Mountain and in its particular building style, how World War II affected its construction, why it was the site of the world’s first heart transplant in 1967, and how and why its functioning has been compromised in the last two decades.

LECTURE TITLES
  • Location, design and construction. Prof H Phillips
  • War and peace. Prof A Digby
  • The golden years. Prof H Phillips
  • Operating in a new political environment. Prof A Digby
  • The people of Groote Schuur Hospital. Prof H Phillips & Prof A Digby
Recommended reading
  • Phillips, H. & Digby, A. with Deacon, H. & Thomson, K. At the heart of healing in Cape Town: Groote Schuur Hospital 1938–2008. Jacana Press, 2008

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

SS Course 2009: The Jews of South Africa: Past, Present and Future

Course 122
Date:
19–23 January
Time: 11.15 am
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

The Jews of South Africa: Past, Present and Future
Presented by Professors Richard Mendelsohn and Milton Shain, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town
Co-sponsored by the Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Cape Town


The course seeks to recover the historical experience of South African Jews, a significant minority that never comprised more than four per cent of the white population in South Africa. Today it numbers about 80 000, less than one quarter per cent of the total population. The course will examine broad themes and issues in the South African Jewish experience, focusing on the making of the community, anti- Semitism, the transformation of South African Jewish identity, and Jews and apartheid. The final lecture will reflect on the future of South African Jewry.


LECTURE TITLES

  1. ‘New wine in old bottles’: the making of South African Jewry.
  2. Trials, tribulations and tzores: anti-Semitism and South African society.
  3. From South African Jews to Jewish South Africans.
  4. Community with a conscience? Jews and apartheid.
  5. Whither South African Jewry?

Recommended reading

  • Mendelsohn, R. & Shain, M. The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History. Jonathan Ball, 2008.
  • Mendelsohn, R. & Shain, M. (eds.) Memories, Realities and Dreams: Aspects of the South African Jewish Experience. Jonathan Ball, 2002.
  • Shain, M. The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa. University Press of Virginia/Witwatersrand University Press, 1994.
  • Shimoni, G. Community and Conscience: The Jews in Apartheid South Africa. David Philip, 2003.

SS Course 2009: Psychological Realism in American Drama

Course 253
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 8.00 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00


Psychological Realism in American Drama
Presented by Dr Dana Rufolo, writer, broadcaster, art therapist

This course will explore 20th century American drama by looking at five major playwrights who changed the way we look at theatre. It will focus on the way psychoanalytic theories and the emotional realities of characters are intertwined with experiments in dramatic style. The concept of ‘psychological realism’ will be defined and biographical information offered alongside a focus on the playwrights’ expressed attitude to the use of psychological realism in their plays.
In the first lecture, Nobel Prize winning dramatist Eugene O’Neill’s work will be considered, followed by an exploration of the psycho- logical realism techniques of Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and Tony Kushner. Special attention will be paid to the set of writers – Albee, Williams and Kushner – whose dramatisations of issues of sexual identity interrogate the psychological role of the victim.

LECTURE TITLES

  1. Psychological realism: Eugene O’Neill’s love affair with Freudian psychology.
  2. Tennessee Williams: the victim as heroic and mad.
  3. Edward Albee: the drive towards psychological integration.
  4. Sam Shepard’s theatrical world: the spooky and abnormal.
  5. Tony Kushner’s dramatic forays: shock and consequence.


Recommended reading

  • O’Neill, E. Long Day’s Journey into Night. Yale University Press, 1956.
  • Albee, E. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Penguin Group (USA), 1983.
  • Williams, T. A Streetcar Named Desire. New Directions, 1947.
  • Shepard, S. Buried Child. Dramatists Play Service, 1997.
  • Kushner, T. Angels in America. Theatre Communications Group, 1992. (Or any other editions of the plays.)

SS Course 2009: The Arabic Linguistic Tradition

Course 252
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 8.00 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

The Arabic Linguistic Tradition
Presented by Ameenullah Abderoef, lecturer in Arabic, and Dr Sulaiman Nordien, researcher of classical Arabic dictionaries

Islam, Arabs and the Muslim world are seldom absent from the daily news, but few know how Arab petro-dollars have triggered a huge expansion in the educational systems of Muslim countries from Morocco to Indonesia. Trained expertise has facilitated the retrieval and the publication of Islaam’s classical heritage from the world’s libraries, museums and mosques.
The Arabic language started its history as Islaam’s religious, liturgical, intellectual and international medium, over 1 400 years ago. From the Arabian Peninsula it was cultivated in cities like Basra, Kufa, Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo. Who were the scholars who wrought this desert language into such a rich linguistic vehicle? What were its special features?

This course will introduce the history and personalities of the Arabic linguistic tradition, spanning 13 centuries of research and production. It will interest the student of Islaam and of Islamic literature, as well as anyone wishing to know more about this aspect of world history, culture and general linguistics. No knowledge of Arabic will be assumed.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. An overview of Arabic pioneers.
  2. Systematisers: versifiers of rhymed rules and thesauruses.
  3. Language purists: critics, simplifiers, puritans.
  4. Broader literature: linguistic monographs and language theories.
  5. Jumbo compendia: the Alfiyya’s commentaries and Taajul Aroos.

Recommended reading
  • Versteegh, K. The Arabic Language. Edinburgh University Press, 2001.
  • Haywood, J. Arabic Lexicography. Brill, 1959 (2nd revised edition, 1965).
  • Chejne, A.G. The Arabic Language, its Role in History. University of Minnesota Press, 1969.

SS Course 2009: The Passions of Puccini

Course 251
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 8.00 pm
Venue: Baxter Concert Hall, Rondebosch
Full Price: R380,00 Staff: R280,00 Reduced: R280,00
***Tickets are on sale at the door only if seats are available: R100,00 staff & reduced (on production of cards): R85,00.
The Passions of Puccini
Presented by Professor Angelo Gobbato, former director of UCT Opera School


Women played a key role in the creative and social life of composer Giacomo Puccini, who was born in Lucca on 22 December 1858 and grew up against the changing social and cultural background of the newly created Italian state. In commemorating the recent 150th anniversary of his birth, this course of lecture-performances will investigate how female figures dominated Puccini’s life and influenced the nature of his operas, both lesser and well-known.

Beginning with his early works, Le Villi and Edgar, which show the influence of a powerful mother and loving sisters, the course will reveal parallels between Puccini’s own romantic involvements and the contents of the operas. After focusing on Manon Lescaut, La Bohème and Tosca, there will be discussion of Madama Butterfly, The Girl of the Golden West, La Rondine, and finally his triptych of one-act operas Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, and his last fairy tale opera, Turandot.

Extracts from the operas, to piano accompaniment, will be performed by acclaimed singers from the Cape Town Opera Studio and talented vocalists from the UCT Opera School.

LECTURE-PERFORMANCES
  1. Wild dances with the Willis, and the gypsy charms of Tigrana.
  2. Seduced by Elvira Gemignani and the irresistible Manon Lescaut.
  3. Living with the Gemignanis in the company of Mimì, Musetta and Tosca.
  4. The suicide of a little Butterfly and of a humble chamber-maid: redemption in England and the New World.
  5. Doretta’s swallow, Lauretta’s father, Angelica’s child and a Princess of ice.

SS Course 2009: Russia At War: Through the Eyes of its Writers

Course 243
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 6.00 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

Russia at War: Through the Eyes of its Writers
Dr Sara Pienaar, Research Fellow, South African Institute of International Affairs

The experience of war gave birth to some of Russia’s finest literature, including work by Pushkin, Tolstoy and Pasternak, as well as those less known in the West, such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Mikhail Lermontov and Valery Grossman. Although all were subjected to censorship of some kind, their works remain powerful depictions of human beings under conditions of conflict.


This course will discuss selected works of familiar Russian writers and introduce you to a number of less familiar ones. It will survey some of the wars Russians have fought in the last 250 years, and will focus on the relationship between the writers, their works and the social conditions they describe. The course will not involve close textual analysis. While students are encouraged to read or reread the fiction listed below, the course will not assume full familiarity with the works; not all of them will be discussed in the same detail.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. Historical and literary framework: wars, writers and their contexts.
  2. Rebellion and invasion: the Pugachev Revolt and 1812. (Pushkin’s Captain’s Daughter and Tolstoy’s War and Peace.)
  3. The Caucasus, Crimea and the Chechens. (Lermontov’s Hero of our Times, Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad, The Cossacks and Sevastopol Tales.)
  4. War and Revolution. (Sholokhov’s Quiet Flows the Don, Solzhenitsyn’s 1914, Babel’s Red Cavalry, Bulgakov’s White Guard, Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago.)
  5. The Great Patriotic War 1941–45. (Solzhenitsyn’s Incident at Krechetovka Station and Grossman’s Life and Fate.)

Recommended reading
  • The books and stories listed above, in any edition.

SS Course 2009: The Collaborative Imagination

Course 241
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 6.00 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

The Collaborative Imagination
Presented by Dan Simon, publisher, Seven Stories Press, biographer and translator

As society becomes more technology-based and less based on reading and writing, it has become urgent to understand the nature of collaborative interactions. This course will look at selected literary collaborations and the way different epochs develop models suited to their historical moments. Each lecture will look at a particular historical moment and group of collaborative processes. The first lecture will consider Kafka and his collaboration with publisher Kurt Wolff and friend and editor Max Brod. Then we will look at the relationships between the American editor Maxwell Perkins and Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, and why they were tinged with tragedy. The writers that coalesced around Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, Kerouac and Burroughs in particular, raise the issue of why that moment required the attempted destruction of their literary forefathers. We will also discuss contemporary technologies such as YouTube, FaceBook and others which are intensely collaborative, although in ways dissimilar to past collaborations. The last lecture will reflect on how to make our collaborations as fruitful as possible. Using the established roles of writer and editor as examples, how do these paradoxical relation- ships, where intensely individual activity is immersed in collaborative processes, really work?

LECTURE TITLES
  1. Kafka: most solitary of writers.
  2. Wolfe, Fitzgerald and Hemingway: achievement and tragedy.
  3. Ginsberg and the Beats: literary parents under attack.
  4. New technologies, new forms of collaboration.
  5. Collaborations: containing and/or exploding contradictions.
Recommended reading
  • Scott Berg, A. Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. Berkely Publishing Group, 2008.
  • Scott Fitzgerald, F. The Great Gatsby. (Any edition.)
  • Algren, N. Nonconformity: Writing on Writing. Seven Stories Press, 1998.
  • Handouts of other selected material will be provided at the lectures.

SS Course 2009: "All the World's a Stage": Actors, Artists and the Shakespeare Phenomenon

Course 231
Date: Monday 26–Wednesday 28 January
Time: 3.30 pm
Full Price: R162,00 Staff: R81,00 Reduced: R40,00

"All The World's a Stage": Actors, Artistsm and the Shakespeare Phenomenon
Presented by Angela Lloyd, freelance historian, writer and lecturer

At the time of his death in 1616, Shakespeare was only one of several successful writers for the stage, less well-connected to the court and society than his contemporaries Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and therefore with a lesser reputation. Yet within a century he had outstripped them all, and today his impact is universal. This three-lecture course will suggest how that happened.

The particular focus will be on Shakespeare as a man of the theatre: actor, manager, proprietor, and above all playwright. It was through his plays that his reputation grew, and it was actors and artists who brought to life the ‘infinite variety’ of his stage world.

After the Restoration, theatre flourished, and new techniques of printing made the work of artists accessible to an ever-increasing public. The course will trace the great actors and managers of the 18th and 19th centuries, the plays they presented, the roles they chose, and the way they were depicted in works of art by artists of their day. The plays themselves will be explored, for they provided themes for paintings, political, satirical, or narrative, and became a limitless source of inspiration for the Romantic Movement.

In the 21st century millions visit Shakespeare’s birthplace, while the Bard straddles countless websites. David Garrick, trudging through the mud after his disastrous Great Shakespeare Jubilee, would have been amazed to know what forces he had set in motion.

LECTURE TITLES

  1. ‘My picture is my stage’: David Garrick with Hogarth, Hayman and Zoffany.
  2. ‘All the splendour of the stage’: John Philip Kemble and Sarah Siddons, with Reynolds, Lawrence, Blake.
  3. Imagination à la Shakespeare: Romantic Europe, Imperial Britain and the ‘Universal Genius’.

SS Course 2009: Soldier Poets of the First World War

Course 222
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 11.15 am
Full: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

Soldier Poets of the First World War
Presented by Dr Jean Moorcroft Wilson, biographer and lecturer, Faculty of Lifelong Learning, Birkbeck College, University of London

The First World War was a milestone in English history and also in literature. Unlike the wars that preceded it, this was a total war, in which not only soldiers but also civilians were affected. (Over three- quarters of a million died in the fighting and countless more were injured). It is notable, however, that the most powerful literature to emerge from the war was written by combatants. Their heightened experience in war appears to have stimulated new intensities of imagination. This is particularly true of the poetry of the period, with its insights into changing attitudes towards the war, attitudes which in turn affected the development of the war itself.

This course will approach the subject chronologically, the great dividing line being the Somme battles from 1916 to 1917 which separate what one might call the first generation of war poets – Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell and Charles Hamilton Sorley among them – from the second, which includes such great poets as Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen and Cape Town’s own Great War poet Isaac Rosenberg. Rosenberg was staying with his sister in District Six when war was declared in August 1914, a circumstance which radically influenced his poetry and attitude towards the conflict.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. From jingoistic sacrifice to patriotic realism: Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell, Charles Hamilton Sorley.
  2. Siegfried Sassoon: ‘My killed friends are with me where I go’.
  3. Edward Thomas: ‘Now all roads lead to France’.
  4. Wilfred Owen: ‘The Pity of War’.
  5. Isaac Rosenberg: ‘On First Receiving News of the War: Cape Town’.
Recommended reading
  • Bergonzi, B. Heroes’ Twilight: a Study of the Literature of the 1st World War. Carcanet, 1997.
  • Fussell, P. The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford University Press, 1975.
  • Wilson, J.M. Isaac Rosenberg: the Making of a Great War Poet. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008.
  • Wilson, J.M. Siegfried Sassoon: the Making of a War Poet. Duckworth, 2004.
  • Wilson, J.M. Charles Hamilton Sorley: a Biography. Cecil Woolf Pubs, 1985.

SS Course 2009: Fantastical Magical Shakespeare

Course 213
Date: 26–30 January
Time: 9.15 am
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

Fantastical Magical Shakespeare
Presented by Nigel Bakker, School of Education, University of Cape Town


Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest have been subject to many interpretations. Some studies argue that they are pre-eminently plays of magic and fantasy, farce and romance. But recent interpretations have suggested that there are much darker ways of ‘making sense’ of them. This course will look at these two of Shakespeare’s most frequently staged plays by exploring them primarily as scripts rather than academic texts: moments of theatre that need actors and audiences to become the theatrical experiences for which they were created. In that context, some interpretations might seem to offer no sense at all, while others may provoke ways of seeing that enrich a production for a modern audience.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. ‘Of imagination all compact’: Shakespeare and the theatrical imagination.
  2. ‘This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard’: What makes A Midsummer Night’s Dream funny?
  3. ‘Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief?’ Evil patriarchs? Wife battering? Bestiality?
  4. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’: The theatricality of The Tempest.
  5. ‘Sounds and sweet airs’: Renunciation and reconciliation.
Recommended reading
  • Butler, M. The Tempest. Penguin Books, 2007.
  • Holland, P. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Orgel, S. The Tempest. Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Wells, S. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Penguin, 2005.

SS 2009 Course: A-Capella Music of South Africa

Course 194
Date: Friday 23 January
Time: 1.00 pm
Full Price: R54,00 Staff: R27,00 Reduced: R14,00
**Tickets are on sale at the door only if seats are available: R60,00; staff & reduced (on production of cards): R32,00.

A-Cappella Music of South Africa: ‘A Nation Scored in Four Parts’
Presented by
Neo Muyanga, composer and musician

Vocal music accompanied South Africa as the nation shaped itself into our fledgling democracy. This lunch-time lecture will argue that there are two reasons why the a-cappella music of our past is so beloved internationally and locally: while the world outside admired how our communal singing gave ‘voice’ to our struggles against colonialism and apartheid, choral singing was regarded locally not only as a way to vent frustration and despair about our political situation but also as a means of expressing sophistication, erudition and ‘cool’.

A number of South Africa’s SADC neighbours adopted Nkosi sikelel’ i-Africa (written by Enoch Sontonga in 1897), each fashioning the famous melody into its own song of patria. The 1960s saw Miriam Makeba become the first world superstar from Africa, following the release of the collaborative album An Evening with Belafonte and Makeba, featuring a number of a-cappella struggle songs. More recently, in 2008, the ‘scathamiya’ supergroup Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Soweto Gospel Choir received Grammy awards in the USA. Yet we seldom hear their music on South African radio stations and their videos are not on high rotation on our TV channels.

This lecture will ask why this is so. It will consider whether South Africans have lost interest in our vocal music and whether it still has the potential to serve as a mirror reflecting our current socio-political condition.

SS Course 2009: C. Louis Leipoldt and His English Historical Novels

Course 152
Date: 19–23 January
Time: 8.00 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00


C. Louis Leipoldt and His English Historical Novels
Presented by Professor Trevor Emslie, publisher and Faculty of Law, UCT

N.P. van Wyk Louw said of C. Louis Leipoldt after his death: ‘In the days of our greatest distress Leipoldt was the heart of the Afrikaans nation … [he] gave words to our grief’. While Leipoldt’s Afrikaans work is well known, few people realise the full extent of his literary legacy, and this course hopes to stimulate greater appreciation of his English oeuvre.

Leipoldt was not only a poet, playwright and novelist, but a paediatrician, botanist, journalist, cook and wine connoisseur. In The Valley, a historical trilogy set in the Cederberg, Leipoldt preserves priceless gems from South Africa’s heritage. He wrote the trilogy, which delves deep into the South African psyche, in his fifties, during a particularly productive period of his creative life. In the three related novels (Gallows Gecko, Stormwrack and The Mask) he portrays the harmony of pre-war Cape Colonial life on the farm; the calamity of the Anglo-Boer War; and conflicting allegiances in a village recognisable as Clanwilliam in the 1920s. The course will offer biographical insights into Leipoldt in all his facets, in order to convey a sense of a man ahead of his time, who critically appraised life in South Africa in a manner both sympathetic and startlingly modern.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. C. Louis Leipoldt: South African man of the world.
  2. Gallows Gecko: comedic insight in a pre-war colonial valley.
  3. Stormwrack: civil war in the Cederberg.
  4. The Mask: the aftermath of war and polemical life in a bucolic Cape village.
  5. Leipoldt the connoisseur: the poetry’s in the taste, the flavour in the words.

Recommended reading

  • Leipoldt, C. Louis. The Valley: A trilogy comprising Gallows Gecko, Stormwrack & The Mask. Stormberg Publishers, 2002,

or the individual novels, all published by Cederberg Publishers.

SS Course 2009: Chaplin's Harrowing Laughter

Course 151
Date: 19–23 January

Time: 8.00 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

Chaplin's Harrowing Laughter
Presented by Guy Willoughby, writer, actor and lecturer

During the long filmic career of Charlie Chaplin (1914–67), he witnessed cinema transformed from an obscure fad to a central creative force in world culture. Chaplin had everything to do with this. His brilliant comic gifts are legendary, but it is also significant that he had total control of his product from 1923 on and an adroit grasp of the power of commercial media to change – literally – the way we see. This overview of Chaplin’s life and work will examine his greatest movies. It will consider how the cinema’s finest comic actor-writer shaped his times and how the times, in turn, shaped Chaplin.

Please note that before each lecture, relevant films (or
extracts from films) will be screened at 6.00 pm for participants in this course
.


LECTURE TITLES
  1. Enter the Tramp (1914–22).
  2. Tramp triumphant (1925–31).
  3. Chaplin’s modern times (1936–46).
  4. The long goodbye (1952–67).
  5. Reprise: Chaplin in world culture.

Recommended reading
  • Chaplin, C. My Autobiography. Simon & Shuster, 1964.
  • Kimber, J. The Art of Charlie Chaplin. Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.
  • Robinson, D. Chaplin: His Life and Art. Collins, 1985.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

SS 2009 Course: Origins of Ballet

Course 142
Date: 19–23 January
Time: 6.00 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

The Origins of Ballet
Svetlana K. Lloyd, freelance lecturer, United Kingdom

The urge to dance seems to be a basic human instinct. Sacred dancing to praise nature’s elements or to propitiate various gods, and group bonding dances to instil courage before battle, date back thousands of years. Eventually dancing became a social activity for all, and alongside ritual and social dancing, ballet took on a specialised identity.

This course will trace the history of ballet, with a particular focus on the Russian tradition and influence. It will consider ballet’s development in Renaissance Italy, followed by its popularity within the 17th century French court, and its adoption by the Imperial Russian court in the 18th century. By the 19th century Russia was taking the lead in classical ballet, but it was not until the early years of the 20th century that the apotheosis was reached under the stewardship of Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev’s genius was to combine the finest and newest in art, music and ballet, embracing French impressionist art and the Russian Slavophile movement of the time. His work was shattered by the 1917 Revolution, although he continued to steer the Ballets Russes to many triumphs abroad. The company’s influence was considerable, and Diaghilev’s legacy can still be detected in the main ballet companies of France, America and England. After decades of stagnation, post-Soviet ballet has now re-emerged and is beginning to cross-pollinate with the rest of the ballet world.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. Origins of ballet: antiquity to Renaissance Italy.
  2. From the Royal court of France to Imperial Russia.
  3. The age of Romanticism: classical ballet.
  4. The Slavophile movement in Russia and its influence.
  5. Sergei Diaghilev: the apotheosis of Russian ballet.

SS 2009 Course: Homage to Haydn

Course 131
Date: 19–23 January
Time: 3.30 pm
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00

Homage to Haydn
Presented by Dr Barry Smith, organist, conductor and musicologist, and Rodney Trudgeon, broadcaster, Fine Music Radio.


Josef Haydn has usually suffered the fate of being coupled with the name of Mozart. It is always ‘The Age of Mozart and Haydn’, never ‘Haydn and Mozart’, just as we always hear of ‘Bach and Handel’ never ‘Handel and Bach’. It has been the whim of fate to place Haydn on a slightly inferior pedestal when, in fact, he was one of the most prolific and innovative composers of his time. Not for nothing is he called the ‘father’ of the symphony, having produced 104 of these between 1757 and 1795. But there is much more to Haydn than great symphonic music. During his long life of 77 years he also composed operas, masses, cantatas, oratorios, concertos, chamber music, vocal and keyboard music. From this vast array of splendid music Rodney Trudgeon and Barry Smith have selected outstanding recordings for this course, marking the 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death.

Please note that this course does not include live performances.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. Haydn vs. Mozart: a 21st century personal perspective. (Rodney Trudgeon)
  2. Symphonies and their ‘father’. (Rodney Trudgeon)
  3. Chamber: Haydn in small scale. (Dr B Smith)
  4. Music for a prince: opera and instrumental. (Dr B Smith & Rodney Trudgeon)
  5. Choral: fruits of an old age. (Dr B Smith)

SS 2009 Course: The Renaissance Garden

Course 121
Date: 19–23 January
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced: R70,00
Time: 11.15 am

The Renaissance Garden
Presented by Dr Paula Henderson, independent architectural historian, lecturer at Courtauld Institute of Art Summer School

The idea of the garden in the Renaissance was remarkably complex. Used as a metaphor and symbol in literature and the visual arts, the garden itself developed into one of the most ambitious and exciting of all art forms. From the 15th century, the artists, architects and philosophers responsible for the design of gardens sought to surpass the achievements of the ancients, who had been their initial inspiration. Gardens, now more expansive and dramatic in their situation, became repositories of fine sculpture, sometimes organised into propagandistic or literary iconographic programmes.

This course will consider the development of Italian, French, Northern European and English Renaissance gardens and show how landscape can be considered one of the great Renaissance art forms.

LECTURE TITLES
  1. The ancient Roman garden in the Renaissance mind.
  2. The garden as symbol.
  3. The Renaissance garden in Italy.
  4. The Renaissance garden in France, Holland, Spain and England.
  5. The legacy of the Renaissance garden.
Recommended readings:
  • Henderson, P. The Tudor House and Garden: Architecture and Landscape in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Yale University Press, 2005.
  • Hobhouse, P. The Story of Gardening. DK Publishing, 2002; or Plants in Garden History. Anova Books, 2004.

SS 2009 Course: Women in Japan: Not Just a Geisha

Course 114
Date: Thursday 22 & Friday 23 January
Time: 9.15 am
Full Price: R108,00 Staff: R54,00 Reduced: R27,00

Women in Japan: Not Just a Geisha
Presented by Suzanne Perrin,
visiting lecturer, Brighton University of Art, United Kingdom

The popular image of a Japanese woman is that of the Geisha, or professional entertainer, encapsulating the ideals of beauty, culture and intelligence packaged like a perfect porcelain doll for the entertainment of men. But these women formed only a tiny percentage of educated females from the 18th to the 20th centuries and there were periods in history when Japanese women had significant rights and influence.This two-lecture course will explore the cultural stereotypes of women in Japan as depicted in prints and paintings from the 6th century to the present. It will contrast images portraying the traditional conformity of women with the reality and complexity of women’s roles in history. It will demonstrate how modern women reject the stereotypes of the past, seeking instead to shape new and independent lives, with a voice, and choice, in the evolving global market.

LECTURE TITLES

  1. Empress to entertainer.
  2. Workhouse to fashion house.

SS 2009 Course: "The Sale of the Century": The Acquisition and Dispersal of the Art Collection of Charles I

Course 111
Date: 19–23 January
Time: 9.15 am
Full Price: R270,00 Staff: R135,00 Reduced : R70,00

‘THE SALE OF THE CENTURY’: THE ACQUISITION AND DISPERSAL OF THE ART COLLECTION OF CHARLES I
Presented by: Edward Saunders, freelance lecturer, United Kingdom

This course is condensed in Course No 195 ‘The Late King’s Goods’: Charles 1’s collection of paintings. Please note that you may not register for both courses.

Charles I was without question the most cultured and artistic monarch to sit on the British throne. During his turbulent reign, from 1625 to the beginning of the Civil War in 1642, he managed to assemble an extraordinary collection of works of art, its importance matched only in magnificence by the royal collections in France, Spain and Austria. Following his execution in 1649, however, the Commonwealth took immediate steps to dispose of the possessions of the royal family in order to support the navy and pay off royal creditors.

This course will commence with the early Stuart court of Charles’ father, James 1, and will then describe how Charles amassed his collection, including who influenced his choices and where the paintings came from. It will consider the details of the Common- wealth sale, who the initial purchasers were and where the paintings eventually went. Finally, with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the role of Charles II, in his attempt to recover and replace his father’s lost works, will be discussed.

LECTURE TITLES:
  1. The courts of James 1 and Charles I.
  2. The acquisitions.
  3. The final years, the execution and the sale.
  4. The dispersal.
  5. The restoration.