About Us

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Washington National Wagner Society’s web site. The Washington National Wagner Society has been organized to promote highest standards in music by helping to promote the best and the brightest singers, instrumentalists, and lecturers.

In 1883, the year of Der Meister's death, a Richard Wagner Society of Washington, DC was founded in order to "introduce chamber music into this city" and met at the Universalist Church in Washington , DC (in its former location at 13th and L Streets, NW) for chamber music concerts. This early Richard Wagner Society of Washington, DC was active from 1883-1886. This may be the first "Richard Wagner" Society on record in Washington , DC . Between World War 1 and World War II, i nterest in Wagner (and anything else German) waned. However, the Metropolitan Opera has continued to present Wagner’s musical dramas regularly from its opening years through the present except for a  4 year hiatus between 1917 and 1921. Interest in Wagner in the US came alive again in 1976 with the founding of the Wagner Society of America in Chicago . Since 1976, there has been, in the words of the Wagner Society of America founder Art Clifton (in 1976), a “Wagner Renaissance,” with renewed and steadfast interest in Richard Wagner, his life, music, drama, and influence on art, society, and culture worldwide.

Between 1976 and 2004, there was a growing Wagner Renaissance through the United States.  In the Nation’s Capital, for instance, a number of Wagner study groups and larger organizations flourished and some are still in existence. 

With the need for and interest in communication and bringing together the vast amount of resources worldwide on Wagner and his works as well as reaching across multigenerational, multicultural, and multiethnic communities, and performing artists from these communities, the Washington National Wagner Society was founded and incorporated in September 2004, and carries on the Wagnerian tradition in the Nation's Capital as well as nationwide and internationally.

Our motto – “Bridging the multi-cultural, multi-ethnical, multi-generational communities through the music of Richard Wagner” – surely will make our audiences, our performers, and perhaps our world more harmonious.

We hope you will enjoy being part of our Society.  Please feel free to contact us with any questions you may have.