The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather5/22/2023 However, it is not until Fred Ottenburg enables her to have a restorative summer on a ranch in the mountains of the West that she is able to discover the nature of her gift and believe in it enough to invest in study abroad, leading to her eventual success. In Chicago her next piano teacher, Andor Harsanyi, devotes much personal time to helping Thea realize this gift by challenging her to give up studying piano to study voice. The death of an adult admirer, Ray Kennedy, who has named her beneficiary of his life insurance, finances these studies which ultimately allow her to discover her true gift: her voice. With the help of Herr Wunsch, her teacher who sees her musical genius but does not completely understand it, young Thea dares to leave everyone she knows to study music in Chicago. Readers meet Thea as a gifted piano player unhappy with the sheltered life her parents have planned for her. This novel, the most autobiographical of Cather’s works, features the dramatic landscape of the West as the catalyst of Thea’s artistic birth. Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark (SL) chronicles the life of Thea Kronborg, from her years as a young girl growing up in the small town of Moonstone, Colorado, through her years of international acclaim as an opera singer.
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