Format:
XIV, 389 S. :
,
zahlr. Ill.
ISBN:
0-520-08394-6
Series Statement:
California studies in 19th century music 9
Content:
As never before or since, the life and works of Richard Wagner dominated American music-making at the close of the nineteenth century. Europe, too, was obsessed with Wagner, but - as Joseph Horowitz shows in this first history of Wagnerism in the United States - the American obsession was unique
Content:
Wagner himself predicted that the New World would prove especially receptive to his operas and ideas, and he was right. The conductor Anton Seidl (1850-1898) was his crucial New World emissary, a priestly and enigmatic central figure in New York's musical life - and the central figure in Wagner Nights. Though acclaimed in Europe as Wagner's closest protege, Seidl became an American citizen
Content:
Seidl's own admirers included the women of the Brooklyn-based Seidl Society, who wore the letter "S" on their dresses. For wives whose husbands were away making money, and whose own professional possibilities were suppressed by contemporary mores, Seidl's performances offered the intense emotional release of Sieglinde's ecstatic pregnancy and Isolde's orgasmic love-death. At the Metropolitan Opera, according to the Musical Courier, the audience "stood on their chairs and screamed their delight for what seemed hours." In the summers, Seidl conducted fourteen times a week at Brighton Beach, on Coney Island
Language:
English
Subjects:
Musicology
Keywords:
1813-1883 Wagner, Richard
;
Rezeption
;
1813-1883 Wagner, Richard
;
Rezeption
;
Geschichte
Author information:
Horowitz, Joseph 1948-
