In 1871, one year after the premiere in Munich of Richard Wagner’s opera “Die Walküre,” a German-born American conductor named Theodore Thomas wrote Wagner asking if he might perform excerpts of this new work in the United States. Wagner turned him down, worried that loose American copyright laws might not protect his new music.

Undeterred, Thomas turned for advice to the famous German conductor Hans von Bulow, who suggested Thomas try to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Wagner to plead his case. After all, Bulow told Thomas, Wagner was actually quite interested in America. The meeting never took place, but somehow Thomas secured a manuscript of what would become the most popular orchestral excerpt from “Die Walküre” its famous “Ride of the Valkyries.”

No one knows how Thomas managed it. Some speculate von Bulow himself provided the music. Others suggest the American conductor got his copy from Franz Liszt.

In any case, on today’s date in 1872, the “Ride of the Valkyries” was performed for the first time in America at one of Theodore Thomas’s concerts in Central Park.

It proved to be a smash hit with Manhattanites. As Thomas recounted in his memoirs, “the people jumped up on their chairs and cheered.”

Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883) — Ride of the Valkyries, fr Die Walküre (Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, cond.) DG 471 627