The Disciple: A Wagnerian Tale of the Gilded Age

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 Tannhäuser March. A clairvoyant theosophist, Langford identified Se...