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Rating: 
Summary: Wagner in America
Review: The music of Richard Wagner in the United States in the late nineteenth century is an unjustly neglected subject. This book strives to fill that void; it succeeds, up to a point.Wagner reformed traditional opera and created the "music drama". The European reaction to this new concept was mixed. In America, however, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. The Metropolitan Opera came into existence on the strength of Wagner's music dramas. So warm was the reaction, that Wagner even considered (as did his son Siegfried) emigrating. The lion's share of this book is devoted to Anton Seidl, who championed Wagner in New York in the 1890's. For many years, he worked at Wagner's side in Bayreuth, learning his craft. In the United States, he championed Wagner's music. The American public loved it. The title of this book, Wagner Nights, is a reference to the summer Wagner concerts that Seidl conducted on Coney Island at Brighton Beach. In the latter portion of this book, the author switches from chronicler to analyst. Here, you must take him with a rather large grain of salt. He performs a pseudo-Freudian analysis on both the Wagner fans and Wagner's operas. He also tries his hand with a bit of cultural anthropology. Here, the information is subjective and marginal. These latter chapters could have been deleted without losing any important information. In spite of these weaknesses, this book is interesting and enlightening. I recommend it, but with the previously stated reservations.
Rating:
Summary: Wagner in America
Review: The music of Richard Wagner in the United States in the late nineteenth century is an unjustly neglected subject. This book strives to fill that void; it succeeds, up to a point. Wagner reformed traditional opera and created the "music drama". The European reaction to this new concept was mixed. In America, however, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. The Metropolitan Opera came into existence on the strength of Wagner's music dramas. So warm was the reaction, that Wagner even considered (as did his son Siegfried) emigrating. The lion's share of this book is devoted to Anton Seidl, who championed Wagner in New York in the 1890's. For many years, he worked at Wagner's side in Bayreuth, learning his craft. In the United States, he championed Wagner's music. The American public loved it. The title of this book, Wagner Nights, is a reference to the summer Wagner concerts that Seidl conducted on Coney Island at Brighton Beach. In the latter portion of this book, the author switches from chronicler to analyst. Here, you must take him with a rather large grain of salt. He performs a pseudo-Freudian analysis on both the Wagner fans and Wagner's operas. He also tries his hand with a bit of cultural anthropology. Here, the information is subjective and marginal. These latter chapters could have been deleted without losing any important information. In spite of these weaknesses, this book is interesting and enlightening. I recommend it, but with the previously stated reservations.
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