- Leeuwarden, Friesland, Netherlands
Asing Walthaus
University of Groningen, Arts, Media and Culture, Department Member
Making the Tailcoats Fit is the first ever biography on the life of pianist / conductor / composer / Oscar-winner Richard Hageman. Dutch-born Richard Hageman (1881 - 1966) toured the US at the beginning of the twentieth century as... more
Making the Tailcoats Fit is the first ever biography on the life of pianist / conductor / composer / Oscar-winner Richard Hageman.
Dutch-born Richard Hageman (1881 - 1966) toured the US at the beginning of the twentieth century as accompanist to
the French cabaret singer Yvette Guilbert, performing ‘for cowboys’, as he put it. For years, he conducted
the Metropolitan Opera in New York, performing with stars like Enrico Caruso and Sergei Rachmaninoff. His first and only opera, Caponsacchi, was forbidden by the Nazis. Nominated five times for an Oscar for ‘Best Score’ he received an Oscar as one of the contributing composers to the score of Stagecoach, the classic John Ford western.
He married three times: his first wife threatened him with a gun, the second left him for an Italian duke, the third stayed with him till his death in Los Angeles.
The writing duo of South African-born pianist Nico de Villiers and Dutch journalist Asing Walthaus unearthed a wealth of remarkable facts about Hageman from archives and newspapers.
“I wish I had this book at my disposal ten years earlier when I struggled to put together a portrait. (...) I trust that you will enjoy reading about this urbane, talented, accomplished, dedicated, and complex man as much as I did.”
Dr. Kathryn Kalinak, Professor of English and Film Studies at Rhode Island College and author of How the West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford.
Dutch-born Richard Hageman (1881 - 1966) toured the US at the beginning of the twentieth century as accompanist to
the French cabaret singer Yvette Guilbert, performing ‘for cowboys’, as he put it. For years, he conducted
the Metropolitan Opera in New York, performing with stars like Enrico Caruso and Sergei Rachmaninoff. His first and only opera, Caponsacchi, was forbidden by the Nazis. Nominated five times for an Oscar for ‘Best Score’ he received an Oscar as one of the contributing composers to the score of Stagecoach, the classic John Ford western.
He married three times: his first wife threatened him with a gun, the second left him for an Italian duke, the third stayed with him till his death in Los Angeles.
The writing duo of South African-born pianist Nico de Villiers and Dutch journalist Asing Walthaus unearthed a wealth of remarkable facts about Hageman from archives and newspapers.
“I wish I had this book at my disposal ten years earlier when I struggled to put together a portrait. (...) I trust that you will enjoy reading about this urbane, talented, accomplished, dedicated, and complex man as much as I did.”
Dr. Kathryn Kalinak, Professor of English and Film Studies at Rhode Island College and author of How the West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford.
