"Remarkably accurate and sensitive. . . . not only a book about Wagner in America, but an informative description of the development of musical taste in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day."--Daniel Barenboim, Music Director, Chicago Symphony Orchestra "Horowitz adds another to his list of impressive books on American musical culture. Wagner Nights surpasses any previous writing on the history of American operatic culture in the Gilded Age. If only for Horowitz's resurrection of Anton Seidl--an unbelievably iconic figure in late nineteenth-century American musical life--his book would be of great value. And to have put Seidl, appropriately, in the context of the 'genteel tradition' of Victorian America, is a historical coup. Horowitz writes with solid scholarship and an extraordinarily fresh eye. This is a brilliant and compellingly readable account."--H. Wiley Hitchcock, author of Music in the United States "A fascinating account of Anton Seidl, who became America's premier interpreter of Wagner, and of the women of the Seidl society who supported his work. In an era that was as complex and divided as our own, some sought to tame Wagner while others relished the intense emotions he evoked. This important story really bursts the seams of the existing paradigm of 'genteel' late nineteenth-century American culture."--Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, author of Culture and the City