Cloaked in mystery, Anton Seidl materialized in the New World as Wagner’s personal emissary. A sorcerer, he commanded musical New York and toured widely, everywhere received with awed deference. In Brooklyn, Laura Langford’s Seidl Society presented summertime Seidl concerts on Coney Island fourteen times weekly. Working women arrived in special railroad cars; Black orphans were regaled with roast chicken, ice cream, and the Tannh�user March. A clairvoyant theosophist, Langford identified Seidl as a “chela” and traced the ceremonies of Parsifal to the Himalayas. Seidl’s appeal was uncanny; at the American premiere of Tristan und Isolde, women stood on their chairs and “screamed their delight.” At his funeral, women clasped elbows to force their way into the mobbed Metropolitan Opera House, a spectacle of chaos. His Manhattan friends―including Antonin Dvor�k, whose New World Symphony he premiered―were legion. And yet Seidl remained a man apart, afflicted with secret sorrows.

About the Author

Joseph Horowitz’ s eleven previous books mainly deal with the history of classical music in the United States. Understanding Toscanini: How He Became an American Culture-God and Helped Create a New Audience for Old Music (1987) was named one of the year’ s best books by the New York Book Critics Circle. Wagner Nights: An American History (1994) was named best-of-the-year by the Society of American Music. Both Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall (2005) and Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts (2008) made The Economist’ s year’ s-best-books list. In tandem with his Dvor� k’ s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music (2021), Horowitz produced six “ Dvor� k’ s Prophecy” films for Naxos. His current “ More than Music” radio documentaries for National Public Radio, heard bi-montly via the daily newsmagazine “ 1A,” are an outgrowth of this activity. His forthcoming book, The Propaganda of Freedom: JFK, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and the Cultural Cold Warrior, will deal with the cultural Cold War. The larger topic of all these activities is the role of the arts (today embattled) in American history and society. Horowitz’ s website is www.josephhorowitz.com. His blog is www.artsjournal.com/uq.

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