Your proposal resonates very well with a couple of issues, our own mapping projects within Global Theatre Histories is dealing with. Besides the Wagner project Tobias and I are going to present at the workshop, we are also working on a database and visualization of the expansion of Western purpose-built theatre venues throughout Europe and, more specifically, the colonial world between 1860 and 1950. With this, we would like to show the expansion of theatre as a modern institution and lay a fundament for further research on touring theatre, opera, and vaudeville troupes. In order to be able to collect the necessary data for this, we are also in close contacts with similar mapping and database projects, especially Ausstage (https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/browse/), IbsenStage (https://ibsenstage.hf.uio.no/), the Digital Innovation Group of the University of North Carolina and their DH Press project, whose students have prepared a trial with some of our data (http://dhpress.org/), and Doug Reside, digital curator of the NYPL (http://www.nypl.org/online_projects). Quite naturally, data exchange and compatability of different databases has become an important issue for us and Tobias will certainly be happy to discuss our plans and experiences from a technological point of view with you and the others.

Richard Wagner and the huge European and American Wagner movement are certainly also a very interesting example for intellectual networks in the arts. Journals, the Bayreuth Festival as an (almost) annual meeting, touring productions, as well as the infamous Wagner Societies have been important structural elements in the distribution of Wagnerian works and ideas and their linking to wider social movements of artistic and cultural reform. It touches almost the dame time frame as your project (1848-1933) and bears a lot of structural similarities. However, as a “Grenzgänger” phenomenon between arts, politics, and culture, Wagnerians of various generations also develop ideas and controvercies and similar topics within modern discourse.

So, thank you very much for your contribution! I am very much looking forward to meeting you in St Andrews and am sure that we will have a lot of valuable insights and ideas to discuss!

All the best from Munich,
Gero