Artists in Exile: How Refugees from the Twentieth Century War and Revolu tion Transformed the American Performing Arts

Description

Decades of war and revolution in Europe forced an "intellectual migration" during the last century, relocating thousands of artists and thinkers to the United States. For many of Europe's premier performing artists, America proved to be a destination both strange and opportune. Featuring the stories of George Balanchine, Kurt Weill, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and many others, Artists in Exile explores the impact that these famous newcomers had on American culture, and that America had on them.

Widely regarded as the leading historian of American symphonic culture, Joseph Horowitz, 59, is previously the author of seven books dealing with classical music in the US. He serves as Artistic Advisor to various American orchestras and is also co-founder and Artistic Director of Post-Classical Ensemble of Washington, DC. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellow, two NEH Fellowships, a Senior Fellowship from Columbia University, and a certificate of commendation from the Czech Parliament (for various Dvorak festivals he has created in the US). Artists in Exile has been designated by the National Endowment for the Humanities a "We the Peopl

"Heroically researched . . . chock-full of fascinating vignettes, stunning quotations, and shrewd insights on the fly." -- New York Times A masterful study of how the Russian Revolution, the rise of European fascism and the second world war all transformed the American performing arts -- The Economist A persuasive examination of the most compelling of twentieth century cultural phenomena, how refugees from all across Europe, running the gamut from George Balanchine to Billy Wilder, revolutionized American artistic life. Erudite, incisive, inconoclastic, as readable as it is comprehensive, this is just the kind of treatment the participants themselves would have relished. -- Kenneth Turan, film critic, Los Angeles Times "A rich assembly, an unmasked ball teeming with famous names. . . . Horowitz can make judgements boldly, out of deep knowledge. . . . The way Horowtiz raves learnedly...should send any reader diving into Amazon." -- Times Literary Supplement (London)