Don Juan: Interdisciplinary Symposium

Institute of Musical Research and Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London

23 September, 2011

The Don Juan story is one of the most enduring of modern cultural myths, with retellings and versions spanning several centuries, and occurring in the widest imaginable range of cultural forms and narrative media. This informal study day explored the diverse cultural manifestations of the Don Juan figure.

The event was organised by the Literature and Music Research Group of the Open University and was hosted by the Institutes of Musical Research and English Studies. The convenors were Katia Chornik, Delia da Sousa Correa, Fiona Richards and Robert Samuels.

Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Room G22/26, Senate House, from 09.30 – 16.30.

Programme

10.00–11.00: Session 1: Who is Don Juan?

Robert Fraser (The Open University) Don Juan as Bourgeois Hedonist Tragic Hero: Mozart, Kierkegaard and Pierre Jean Jouve

Encarna Trinidad-Barrantes (The Open University)

Legendary Seduction: Don Juan in Spanish Literature, 1630-1970

11.00–11.30: Coffee

11.30–12.30: Sessions 2 & 2a: The Intermedial Don

Käthe Springer-Dissmann (Don Juan Archive, Austria)

Gluck Crossing the Paths of Don Juan: Routes of Two Great European Wanderers

Lawrence Woof (Leeds College of Music)

Automata, Statues and Spectres: The Commendatore in Don Giovanni

Agnimita Chatterjee (University of Calcutta)

Influences of Don Juan in India: The Root and the Fruit

Robert Samuels (The Open University)

Richard Strauss and the musicalisation ofthe Don Juan Myth

12.30–1.45: Lunch

1.45–2.45: Parallel Sessions 3 & 3a: The Romantic to Post-Modern Don

Jonathan Gross (DePaul University,Chicago)

“One / To whom the opera is by no means new”: Byron's debt to Mozart in Canto IV of Don Juan

Peter Cochran (International Byron Society)