Anton Seidl
Anton Seidl (7 May 1850 – 28 March 1898) was a Hungarian conductor.
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[edit] Biography
He was born at Pest, Hungary. He began the study of music at a very early age, and when only seven years old could pick out at the piano melodies which he had heard at the theatre. At 15, he became a student of harmony in counterpoint under Nicolitsch at the Hungarian national musical academy, of which Liszt was director. He attended the normal school at Pest for three years, the gymnasium eight years, and afterward attended the university for two years. At 16, he had been thinking of becoming a priest, but his love for music prevailed, and he entered Leipzig Conservatory in October 1870, remaining there until 1872, when he was summoned to Bayreuth as one of Richard Wagner's copyists.
At Bayreuth, he assisted in making the first fair copy of Der Ring des Nibelungen. Wagner treated him as one of the “chosen few,” and it was natural that he should take a part in the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876. Wagner also sent him to Vienna to place Siegfried and Die Götterdämmerung on the stage.
His chance as a conductor came in 1879 when, on Wagner's recommendation, he was appointed to the Leipzig State Opera. In May 1881, he introduced at the Victoria Theatre, Berlin, the complete Nibelungen Ring trilogy for the first time. In 1882, he went on tour with Angelo Neumann's Nibelungen Ring company. The critics attributed much of the artistic success that attended the production of the Trilogy at Her Majesty's Theatre in London in June of that year to his conducting.
In 1883 Seidl went with Neumann to Bremen, but two years later was appointed as a conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City,[1] and in the same year he married Auguste Kraus, the distinguished singer. He became conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1891 where he remained until is death in 1898. While in New York, he conducted the premiere performance of Antonin Dvořák's New World Symphony, which would have great significance to American classical music.
[edit] References
- ^ Herbert, Victor. Anton Seidl: a memorial by his friends, ed. Henry Theophilus Finck, C. Scribner's Sons, 1899, pp. 123–25, accessed 4 November 2009
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Seidl, Anton". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.- Excerpts from Memoirs of Anton Seidl
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Seidl, Anton". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the [edit] Further reading
- Finck, Henry Theophilus and Krehbiel, Henry Edward. Anton Seidl; a memorial by his friends. New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1899. Reprinted New York : Da Capo Press, 1983. ISBN 0-306-76144-0.
[edit] External links
Media related to Anton Seidl at Wikimedia Commons
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