Artists in exile : how refugees from 20th century war and revolution transformed the American performing arts
Title:
Artists in exile : how refugees from 20th century war and revolution transformed the American performing arts
Author:
Horowitz, Joseph, 1948-
Personal Author:
Edition:
First edition.
Publication Information:
New York : HarperCollins Publishers, [2008]
©2008
Physical Description:
xix, 458 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Summary:
George Balanchine, in collaboration with Stravinsky, famously created an Americanized version of Russian classical ballet. Kurt Weill, schooled in Berlin jazz, composed a Broadway opera. Rouben Mamoulian's revolutionary Broadway productions of Porgy and Bess and Oklahoma! drew upon Russian "total theater." An army of German filmmakers--among them F. W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, and Billy Wilder--made Hollywood more edgy and cosmopolitan. Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich redefined film sexuality. Erich Korngold upholstered the sound of the movies. Rudolf Serkin inspirationally inculcated dour Germanic canons of musical interpretation. An obscure British organist reinvented himself as "Leopold Stokowski." However, most of these gifted émigrés to the New World found that the freedoms they enjoyed in America diluted rather than amplified their high creative ambitions. Russians uprooted from St. Petersburg became "Americans"--they adapted. Representatives of Germanic culture, by comparison, preached a German cultural bible--they colonized.--From publisher description.
Language:
English
Contents:
Introduction: Cultural exchange -- How to become an American : a fortuitous partnership of dance and music -- The German colonization of American classical music -- The musical "margin of the unGerman" -- "In Hollywood we speak German" -- Delayed reaction : Stanislavsky, total theater, and Broadway.
ISBN:
9780060748463
9780060748500
Format :
Book
