Duet With the Past

Composer, conductor and operatic polymath Daron Hagen has written five symphonies, a dozen concertos, 13 operas, reams of chamber music and more than 350 art songs. His intimate, unsparing memoir chronicles his life, from his haunted childhood in Wisconsin to the upper echelons of the music world in New York and Europe. Hagens vivid anecdotes about his many collaborators, friends and mentorsincluding Leonard Bernstein, Lukas Foss, Gian Carlo Menotti, Paul Muldoon, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson and Gore Vidalcounterpoint a cautionary tale of the sacrifices necessary to succeed in the brutally unforgiving business of classical music.