Society for American Music
Bulletin, Volume XXVI, no. 1 (Spring 2000)
A Lady Gives a Monster Concert
Camilla Urso, born in Nantes, France in 1842, was the first female to enter the Paris Conservatory. A child prodigy, Camilla began touring the United States at the age of ten in 1852. Her success in Boston was such that in 1854 soprano Henriette Sontag chose Urso as a replacement in her concert company for the celebrated boy violinist Paul Jullien, who was ill with brain fever.1 After taking a brief break from touring in 1856-1863, Urso continued to concertize for the rest of her life in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and South Africa. She died in New York in 1902.
French conductor Louis Jullien (1812-1860) was a musician-showman of enormous proportions. From his thirty-seven names, to his reputation, to his popularity, and most of all in the size of his concerts, he was a colossus. Born as the son of a bandmaster, he toured America in 1853-54, performing in New York, Boston, and several other American cities. Jullien, who received thirty-six Christian names from the thirty-six members of the Philharmonic Society who were his godfathers,2 developed the promenade concert in England into a highly popular form of entertainment. These concerts generally had an orchestra, multiple bands, choirs, and soloists. They also had novel effects designed to amuse and intrigue those attending such as cannon fire and performance on enormous, one-of-a-kind instruments.3 This type of concert, including large number of instrumentalists and vocalists, eventually became known as a "monster" concert. When Jullien toured America, he brought with him a cadre of fine musicians. His appearance in Boston coincided with Gilmore's tenure as the conductor of the Boston Brass Band,4 and Urso's own concerts.5 This was not the only occasion that Urso would have to observe Jullien's spectacular productions.
Urso's connections with Gilmore run even closer than with Jullien. Gilmore began his career as a bandleader of several Boston bands. In 1859 he formed his own band, which, like many others, served as a regimental band in the early years of the Civil War until an Act of Congress declared all regimental bands were to be discharged in 1862. When Gilmore returned to Boston, he re-organized his band and gave many popular concerts.6 In the fall of 1863, Gilmore hired Urso to play at his concerts in Boston and later to tour in New England. She also toured for him in 1867.7 While details of these tours are not known, Gilmore was among the numerous Boston musicians signing a testimonial to Urso on 7 March 1867.8 He was one of four conductors for a testimonial concert given for Urso in Boston in January 1969, an event so popular that it demanded extra trains be added to accommodate the attendees.9
Possibly with some idea of the success of Jullien's large concerts, Gilmore first conceived of a National Peace Jubilee on June 1867 to commemorate the restoration of peace in the United States. Because of the length of time that it took to find supporters, the Jubilee did not take place until 15 June 1869, after six months of preparations.10 One of the most striking effects in Gilmore's Jubilee was in Verdi's "Anvil Chorus." One hundred firemen hammered anvils while two batteries of guns were used in sequence to blast the first beat of every measure. The orchestra was enormous with two hundred violins and a chorus of ten thousand. The Jubilee lasted five days and was a complete success.11 Did Camilla Urso view the Jubilee? Barnard's biography says only that Urso spent that summer in Bologne and Paris.
If Urso did not attend any of Louis Jullien's concerts in Boston, there is no question that she was fully aware of him when she toured as a performer with Sontag. Jullien and Sontag were scheduled to appear in New Orleans, Louisiana, within days of each other in February 1854, and they were to be followed by the popular violinist Ole Bull who was in concert with the rising operatic star, the young Adelina Patti. The Daily Picayune of New Orleans was full of articles and advertisements for these coming events. As the time grew closer to the scheduled events, the dates kept being juggled. Both Jullien and Sontag were supposed to appear in Odd Fellows Hall.
The competition between touring companies was at times expressed quite openly. Sontag appeared first. Ole Bull and Patti left after one successful concert and one that failed to draw an audience.12 Jullien entered as Sontag departed. When a letter in the Daily Picayune mentioned that prior to her arrival in the city Sontag had held a concert on board ship to benefit the New Orleans Orphan Asylum, Jullien announced that he, too, had given a concert to benefit the Orphan Asylum while on board the Eclipse. Sontag donated $100.00; Jullien's donation was for $200.00.13 After performances in Mobile, Sontag and her troup returned to New Orleans about two weeks later with the addition of Luigi Ardit and his Italian Opera Company to direct them in a series of operas. Jullien was still firmly ensconced in the city. The two battled nightly for audiences. He advertised a bal masque. Sontag offered a Grand Combination Concert for the same night, although she did bow to the competition and postpone this particular concert until after Jullien left the city.14 The real winner in this competition was the city of New Orleans. The Daily Picayune continued to be ecstatic in its praise of both performers. No doubt the young Camilla Urso, who was a part of the Grand Combination Concert, absorbed many details about Jullien.
Henriette Sontag left New Orleans to go to Mexico. Camilla Urso was to have rejoined her upon Sontag's return, but Sontag died of cholera in Mexico. Two years later, Urso, who again was in New York, was asked to join a lady reader, Mrs. Macready, on tour. In 1856, Mrs. Macready left Urso stranded without funds in Nashville, Tennessee.15 Here, Camilla met and married her first husband, George M. Taylor,16 and gave birth to a daughter and son.17 It is possible that the Civil War drove her out of Nashville when that city was evacuated in 1862. By 1863, Urso was back in Boston performing and being hailed as a mature violinist, no longer the child prodigy.
Altough Urso toured under Gilmore's direction in 1863 and 1867, she left Boston in the summer of his National Peace Jubilee for her customary travel abroad. When she came back from Europe, rather than making her usual return to the East Coast, she pushed across the United States to San Francisco. Armed with a letter of introduction from the composer Auber,18 Urso soon enchanted the citizens of San Francisco with her performances. She gave two performances at Platt Hall and then a Sunday Sacred Concert that was described by the Daily Examiner as filling the California Theatre "to its utmost capacity with as brilliant an audience as ever greeted an artist, ... Mlle. Camilla Urso fairly enraptured them with her brilliant execution of master pieces on the violin, and was encored after each."19
Because of the success of her concerts, Urso decided to contribute to a charitable cause for the people of San Francisco. Urso wrote a letter to the President and Board of Directors of the Mercantile Library Association of San Francisco:
- Gentlemen: The present embarrassment of your Society having come to my knowledge, and wishing in some suitable manner to show my gratitute to the people of this city for the kindness and appreciation I have met with during my visit, I have thought of no better method to do so than in offering you the benefit of a grand musical entertainment such as I originally intended giving here, with the sincere hope that it may prove a help towards relieving the Mercantile Library of its present difficulties.
Should my offer be accepted, I will, gentlemen, consecrate all my time during the two months necessary for its preparation, to make it a grand success.20
The idea of a grand festival in San Francisco caught hold. It was scheduled to coincide with the celebration of George Washington's birthday on 22 February.
Advertisements in the San Francisco Examiner described a Grand Orchestra of 150 members with an oratorio chorus of 1200 voices plus a military band. The festival was to last three days, and the third day was to feature a children's concert with 2,000 children from the public schools. The California Pacific Railroad offered special excursion rates from all points to San Francisco for the festival, and public schools were closed for the week.21
A Mr. R. Herold was the General Conductor, but there was no question that it was Urso's festival. Her name headed the advertisements, and her directions were mentioned in the newspaper accounts of the rehearsals.22 Barnard's biography of Urso describes the preparation for the festival from the remodeling of the Mechanics' Pavillion to the building of a great organ and "a drum more portentious [sic] than the Gilmore affair."23 He further states that Urso underwrote the financing of the event, a fact that points to her financial success as a concert artist. "Every bill was in her own name, be it for organ, contractors, printing music books or agents' fares by rail or boat."24 The Daily Examiner of 19 February 1870, noted that $20,000.00 worth of tickets had been sold by that date and that Samuel Mayer, organist and tenor, had traveled inland to deliver instructions to musical societies that were practicing for the event. Even Ole Bull came to town to do a series of concerts at Platt's Music Hall. No doubt he expected that the crowds attending the festival in the afternoons would come to hear him in the evenings.
In imitation of Gilmore's Boston Jubilee, a grand presentation of the "Anvil Chorus" from Il Trovatore and of the "Star Spangled Banner" was planned. The Examiner describes these pieces as having a chorus of 1200 voices accompanied by "Organ, Grand Orchestra, Full Military Band, Drum Corps of the City Militia, 50 Anvils, 100 Firemen, City Fire Bells, and Cannon, to be fired from the Stand of the Leader by the use of electricity."25 The event garnered so much enthusiasm that a grand ball and benefit were given for Urso on Friday evening of festival week, and the festival was extended for two more days.
Urso herself did not perform until the second day. While the Examiner noted that 12,000 people were in the audience and they rose and cheered her when she was introduced, no description was given of her performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Her ball was attended by several thousand people who were described as "the beauty, culture and refinement of the city," and the festival itself was termed "so grand a success."26 Twenty-seven thousand dollars were given to the Mercantile Library after all the bills were paid.
Perhaps the best account of Camilla Urso's playing appears in a review of a performance for the Handel and Haydn Society in the Daily Examiner of 22 February 1889. Apparently the reviewer remembered the festival of 1870 as he described the concert as "bringing Madame Camille Urso again before a public which she bewitched with her violin eighteen or twenty years ago."27 The review continues with a fascinating description of one of the great violinists of the last century:
- Mme. Camilla Urso's appearance was the signal for a very cordial reception, and her playing was listened to with that intensely quiet attention that is most gratifying to a performer, and most significant of his or her rank. She is a rarely sympathetic violinist, and her technique, though not always so certain as it used to be, is wonderfully fine. She plays always with closed eyes, which looks rather odd till one gets used to it. The audience was inconsiderate enough to demand an encore after she had played the long Mendelssohn concerto, and she responded with a caprice of Wieniawski's, which she played exquisitely.28
In her later years, Camilla Urso pleaded for equality for women musicians as orchestra members.29 With her own successful monster concert, she certainly proved herself equal to two of the world's great concert organizers, Louis Jullien and Patrick S. Gilmore.
Notes
1. "Musical Intelligence," Dwight's Journals of Music, 7 January 1854, 111.
2. Adam Carse, The Life of Jullien (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1951) 21.
3. Ibid., 53-54.
4. H.W. Schwartz, Bands of America (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1957) 16. Gilmore became conductor of the Boston Brass Band in 1852.
5. Musical Intelligence, Dwight's Journal of Music, 13 August 1853, 151 and 26 November 1853, 62.
6. Marwood Darlington, Irish Orpheus (Philadelphia: Olivier, Maney, Klein Co., 1950) 19-32.
7. Charles Barnard, Camilla: A Tale of a Violin (Boston: Loring, 1874) 101, 110.
8. Dwight's Journal of Music, 30 March 1867, 7.
9. "Camilla Urso," Dwight's Journal of Music, 30 January 1869, 391.
10. Darlington, Irish Orpheus, 39-40. The famous Norwegian violinist, Ole Bull, initially accepted the position of first violinist for the Jubilee, but apparently he found the task not to his liking. He retired after one day. "Boston musicians," Dwight's Journal of Music, 3 July 1869, 59.
11. Ibid, 55-57.
12. "Musical and Theatrical," The Daily Picayune (New Orleans), 19 February 1854, 1.
13. The Daily Picayune (New Orleans), 19 February 854, 4 and 21 February 1854, 1.
14. The Daily Picayune (New Orleans), Evening Edition 9 March 1854, 1.
15. While Barnard's biography gives the date of this event as 1855, this is contradicted by a reference in Pen and Sword, the Life and Journals of Randal W. McGavock, edited by Herschel Gower and Jack Allen (Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1959), 365. The Daily Gazette of Nashville also shows performances by Macready and Urso in the issue of 3 May 1856. Another version of this event is given in Eminent Women of the Age, edited by James Parton, Reprint edition by Arno Press Inc., 1974, p. 559.
16. Charles Robert Crain, "Music Performance and Pedagogy in Nashville, Tennessee, 1818-1900" (Ph.D. diss., George Peabody College for Teachers, 1975), 112.
17. These events are verified by church and census records of Nashville, Tennessee.
18. "Amusements," Daily Examiner (San Francisco), 23 November 1869, 3.
19. "Sacred Concert," Daily Examiner (San Francisco), 29 November 1869, 3.
20. Charles Barnard, Camilla: A Tale of a Violin (Boston: Loring, 1874), 113-114.
21. "Advertisements," Daily Examiner (San Francisco), 15 February 1870, 2.
"Brief Local Mention," Daily Examiner 26 Feburary, 1870, 3.
22. Details of Urso's Grant Musical Festival can be found in issues of the Daily Examiner for February 1870.
23. Barnard, Camilla: A Tale of a Violin, 115.
24. Ibid., 115-116.
25. Advertisements, Daily Examiner (San Francisco), 15 February 1870, 2.
26. "Local Intelligence," Daily Examiner (San Francisco), 26 Feburary 1870, 3.
27. "A Brand New Oratorio," Daily Examiner (San Francisco) 22 February 1889, 8.
28. Ibid.
29. Susan Kagan, "Camilla Urso," The Strad 102 (February 1991): 150+.
Betsy Miller has been writing a series of articles about nineteenth century performers whose lives intersected with her Pelham and Hopper forebears. Harry George Hopper, a London-trained pianist, emigrated to Boston about 1885. He toured with Camilla Urso in 1888.
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