New York State of Mind: Alexander Shapiro isn’t entirely convinced by a fictionalised account of a great Wagnerian

Review of Joseph Horowitz, The Disciple: A Wagnerian Tale of the Gilded Age (Blackwater Press, 2026). 

November 2026, Volume 20, Number 3, 94–6.

Joseph Horowitz is justly lauded as one of the leading scholars of American music history. Among his signal academic achievements has been the discovery and illuminating exploration of a neglected trove of records at Columbia University and the Brooklyn Historical Society documenting the luminous American career of Hungarian-born conductor Anton Seidl. A protégé of Richard Wagner, Seidl became a pivotal first-generation interpreter and proponent of Wagner’s work at the height of the Gilded Age in his role as principal conductor at the Metropolitan Opera and then as music director of the New York Philharmonic. In Wagner Nights: An American History (1994), Horowitz brought to vibrant life this long-neglected chapter of New York’s cultural history when Wagner’s operas flourished in midtown Manhattan and Brooklyn’s beach resorts under Seidl’s zealous leadership.