vailsymposium

William Berger was born in Los Angeles in 1961, and grew up in a bilingual (Spanish and English) and multicultural (Mexican, Italian, and Jewish) home. After spending some teen years in various places in the US and Europe, he studied Latin and Italian Literature at UC Santa Cruz. During college, he worked part time at the San Francisco Opera in various capacities, including merchandising and translating for the Artists’ Liaison. Moving to New York in 1984, he worked in architecture/design, and was a part-time instructor of Italian and Romance Languages at Baruch College. As a free-lance writer, he has written on a variety of subjects, including architecture, religion, and sports. He is the author of several books on opera, including Wagner Without Fear, Verdi With a Vengeance, and Puccini Without Excuses, (Vintage Books), and wrote the tribute “Chris De Blasio” in Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS (University of Minnesota Press). His most recent books are Speaking of Wagner: Talking to Audiences About The Ring Of The Nibelung (Academica Press, 2020), and Seeking the Sublime Cache (The Prime Convergence Press, 2021). Additionally, he wrote The Metaliad, a mock-epic in the style and form of Byron and Ariosto, and its concurrent stage piece, Rodríguez furioso, and the libretto for the jazz-metal opera La Suspendida. He is a frequent lecturer/speaker at a variety of venues, including The Embassy of Finland, The Italian Cultural Institute (NY), the Smithsonian Institute, The Wagner Society of America (New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Chicago, Dallas, and Boston), the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (Winnipeg), and the opera companies of Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, Baltimore, Austin, Los Angeles, and Washington DC; as well as several webinars. He was the host of WNYC’s Overnight Music in 2004-2006, which included the weekly show “El Salón”, focusing on Hispanic issues in classical music. He is a commentator for the Metropolitan Opera and is heard on Met Opera Radio’s Sirius/XM and Live Stream broadcasts and the podcast series “In Focus”, and is responsible for the Met’s Opera Quiz. He is a keen and active supporter of new music in a variety of genres, especially his predominant passion of Metal. He lives in New York’s East Village with Stephen Miller, his partner of 27 years.