![]() ![]() “Cather wrote a friend that the whole affair had been the nearest she ever had come to personal disgrace,” writes Woodress. A local editor criticized her portrayal of prairie life: “If writers of fiction who use western Nebraska as material would look up now and then and not keep their eyes in the cattle yards, they might be more agreeable company.”īut even more upsetting to family and friends was their belief that Cather had based the character of Aunt Georgiana on her Aunt Franc, who lived in Boston and had studied music before marrying George Cather and moving to Nebraska. All the singers had severe colds (and not much talent) and the actor playing a lead, according to Cather biographer James Woodress, “had to stop in the middle of an aria for a coughing seizure.”Ĭather’s fondness for opera would inspire several of her works of fiction, but “A Wagner Matinée” got her in a bit of trouble with the folks back home when it was first published in 1904. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion for the music of Wagner-in spite of the fact the performance was apparently abysmal. ![]() Web store price: $31.50In 1897 Willa Cather heard her first opera by Richard Wagner when she attended a performance of Lohengrin in Pittsburgh she had moved there the previous year to take a job as a magazine editor. Willa Cather: Stories, Poems, & Other WritingsĪlexander's Bridge | My Mortal Enemy | dozens of stories and other works Previous Story of the Week selection by Willa Cather ![]() The Foundation also has information about the recently renovated Red Cloud Opera House, which Cather frequently visited as a child and where she delivered her high school graduation address in 1890. The blog Windows on the Prairie features beautiful photographs of the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie, 608 acres of “never-been-plowed native prairie.” You can find out more about this nature preserve at the Willa Cather Foundation. Willa Cather meets Stephen Crane in Nebraska ( Reader’s Almanac) ![]()
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