On Hans Pfitzner & the Conservative Artist

When Hans Pfitzner’s opera Palestrina premiered in Munich in June 1917, it found an enthusiastic admirer in Thomas Mann. “Quickly I made this difficult and audacious production into my own, my intimate possession,” Mann said in Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918), the nonfiction book he spent most of World War I writing. “Its appearance at this moment brought me the consolation and blessing of complete sympathy.” Before the year was out, he saw the opera performed five times.