MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 03969fam a2200397 a 4500
001 1516310
005 20220602052318.0
008 931103s1994 cauaf b 001 0 eng
010 $a 93042410
020 $a0520083946
035 $a(OCoLC)29389804
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm29389804
035 $9AJU9328CU
035 $a(NNC)1516310
035 $a1516310
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dNNC$dOrLoB-B
043 $an-us---
050 00 $aML410.W13$bH7 1994
082 00 $a782.1/092$220
100 1 $aHorowitz, Joseph,$d1948-$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n82054152
245 10 $aWagner nights :$ban American history /$cJoseph Horowitz.
260 $aBerkeley :$bUniversity of California Press,$c1994.
263 $a9409
300 $axiv, 389 pages, 10 unnumbered pages of plates :$billustrations ;$c24 cm.
336 $atext$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
490 1 $aCalifornia studies in 19th century music ;$v9
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520 1 $a"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." "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. 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. On "Wagner Nights," sponsored by the Seidl Society, the three-thousand-seat music pavilion was filled to capacity." "That most Wagnerites were women was a distinguishing feature of American Wagnerism. Indeed, America's Wagner cult constituted a vital aspect of fin-de-siecle ferment, anticipating the New American Woman." "Drawing on the work of such cultural historians as T. Jackson Lears and Lawrence Levine, Joseph Horowitz's passionately argued history reveals an "Americanized" Wagner never before documented. As understood in America, Wagner did not challenge the reigning "genteel tradition" but - remarkably enough, given his blatantly sexual and irreligious themes - actually buttressed it. Conventional readings of a dull, repressive Gilded Age make no allowance for the erotic passions and intellectual resourcefulness of the Wagner cult." "For general readers and music lovers, Wagner Nights will be a startling and entertaining read, a treasury of operatic lore from the early heyday of the Metropolitan Opera. For scholars, it offers an unprecedented revisionist history of American culture a century ago."--BOOK JACKET.
600 10 $aWagner, Richard,$d1813-1883$xAppreciation$zUnited States.
650 0 $aMusic$zUnited States$y19th century$xHistory and criticism.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2010102903
650 0 $aMusic$xSocial aspects.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85088891
830 0 $aCalifornia studies in 19th century music ;$v9.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n42034615
852 00 $bmus$hML410.W13$iH7 1994
852 00 $bsaid$hML410.W13$iH7 1994