Why did Wagner found the Bayreuth Festival in this specially built venue? What was his whole vision?

Um, he, he really wanted to dissociate his works from the opera house, the opera houses that existed, the sort of things we'd been hearing about audience behavior and so on, and really that whole world which he saw centered in metropolitan France and Paris.

This was a German vision, a, a new vision.

Really, he initially intended The Ring to be performed after the revolution that never happened.

So it was initially his idea was to be performed on the banks of the Rhine in a temporary festival theater, wooden, that would actually be dismantled after the rest.

At one point, even sort of performance art avant la lettre.

He wanted the score to be burnt also, he said.

[laughs]

Tell us about some of the, um, artificial reefs that people can enjoy off the metropolitan coastline.

Yeah.

Okay.

So look, we've, we've, um, we, we have got quite a few reefs, uh, or wrecks along the, uh, along the, the, the metro coast.

Um, for me though, the standout is the Hobart.

Um, it's a, it's a beast, uh, of a wreck.

Um, you know, you can, you can dive it a number of times and still not see it all.

I understand you guys have maybe dived the Wirrina one, um, and are gonna be involved in some of the monitoring going forward.

What were their most influential works? Maybe you just want to concentrate on one or two of them.

Well, I think I would start with Schoenberg, whom I mentioned before, who, unlike many so-called Viennese composers, was actually Viennese, was born in Vienna.

Vienna has a great history of importing composers whom it reveres and actually ignoring those who come from Vienna itself, Schubert being another example.

But, um, Schoenberg was also unusual in that not that he was a Jewish composer, but that his background was not a wealthy Jewish background at all.

He was from rather as a, um, lower middle-class stock and didn't have the education that many of his Jewish and other peers was.

I mean, he essentially taught himself.

Um, but a work more or less constant with the Secession in many ways would be his string sextet, um, Transfigured Night or Verklarte Nacht in the German.

Why? What was the consequence of that?

What were their most influential works? Maybe you just want to concentrate on one or two of them.

Well, I think I would start with Schoenberg, whom I mentioned before, who, unlike many so-called Viennese composers, was actually Viennese, was born in Vienna.

Vienna has a great history of importing composers whom it reveres and actually ignoring those who come from Vienna itself, Schubert being another example.

But, um, Schoenberg was also unusual in that not that he was a Jewish composer, but that his background was not a wealthy Jewish background at all.

He was from rather, as it- w- lower middle class stock and didn't have the education that many of his Jewish and other peers was.

I mean, he essentially taught himself.

Um, but a work more or less consonant with the secession in many ways would be his string sextet, um, Transfigured Night, or Verklärte Nacht in the German.

Why? What was the consequence of that?