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    A Knight at the Opera: Heine, Wagner, Herzl, Peretz, and the Legacy of Der Tannhäuser
    Unavailable
    A Knight at the Opera: Heine, Wagner, Herzl, Peretz, and the Legacy of Der Tannhäuser
    Unavailable
    A Knight at the Opera: Heine, Wagner, Herzl, Peretz, and the Legacy of Der Tannhäuser
    Ebook278 pages4 hours

    A Knight at the Opera: Heine, Wagner, Herzl, Peretz, and the Legacy of Der Tannhäuser

    By Leah Garrett

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A Knight at the Opera examines the remarkable and unknown role that the medieval legend (and Wagner opera) Tannhauser played in Jewish cultural life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book analyzes how three of the greatest Jewish thinkers of that era, Heinrich Heine, Theodor Herzl, and I. L. Peretz, used this central myth of Germany to strengthen Jewish culture and to attack anti-Semitism. In the original medieval myth, a Christian knight lives in sin with the seductive pagan goddess Venus in the Venusberg. He escapes her clutches and makes his way to Rome to seek absolution from the Pope. The Pope does not pardon Tannhäuser and he returns to the Venusberg. During the course of A Knight at the Opera, readers will see how Tannhäuser evolves from a medieval knight, to Heine's German scoundrel in early modern Europe, to Wagner's idealized German male, and finally to Peretz's pious Jewish scholar in the Land of Israel. Venus herself also undergoes major changes from a pagan goddess, to a lusty housewife, to an overbearing Jewish mother. The book also discusses how the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, was so inspired by Wagner's opera that he wrote The Jewish State while attending performances of it, and he even had the Second Zionist Congress open to the music of Tannhauser's overture. A Knight at the Opera uses Tannhauser as a way to examine the changing relationship between Jews and the broader world during the advent of the modern era, and to question if any art, even that of a prominent anti-Semite, should be considered taboo.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPurdue University Press
    Release dateOct 1, 2011
    ISBN9781612491523
    Unavailable
    A Knight at the Opera: Heine, Wagner, Herzl, Peretz, and the Legacy of Der Tannhäuser
    Author

    Leah Garrett

    LEAH GARRETT is a professor at Hunter College. Her last book, Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel, won and was short-listed for several major literary awards. She lives in New York City with her husband and their two daughters.

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