A Wagner Matinée Lesson Plan

Although she wrote it long before her masterworks My Ántonia and O Pioneers!, "A Wagner Matinéee" contains many hallmarks of Willa Cather's later, more celebrated work. A short narrative about a young Boston man taking his music-loving aunt to the symphony, "A Wagner Matinée" is not only a celebration of music's transformative power but also a bleak portrait of pioneer life. Originally published in a 1904 issue of Everybody's Magazine, then a literary journal devoted to fiction and essays, it was included in Cather's short story collection The Troll Garden, alongside "The Sculptor's Funeral" and "The Garden Lodge."