Another American who was,
perhaps, better known in her own country was Miss Isabella Hinkley who
appeared in 1861, but another who appeared in New York in the same year,
became still better known and was prominent for many years, Clara Louise
Kellogg. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine was the year of Adelina Patti's
debut.

The list of great singers who were imported during this period is long.
We can but touch on it,--there was Jenny Lind in 1850, then came
Marietta Alboni in 1851. Two years later Sontag, and the next year Grisi
and Mario. In 1865 came Parepa Rosa, and in 1870 Christine Nilsson. In
1873, Maurel and Campanini. In 1855 Brignoli appeared, and was for many
years a great popular favorite.

We find efforts in New York to promote German opera. Operas by
Germans--"Fidelio" for instance--had been heard together with operas by
Italians, and others, but now Wagner came above the horizon, and German
opera began to mean Wagner. So we find a "Tannhaeuser" and "Lohengrin" in
New York in 1859,--quite inadequate performances according to the
opinion handed down to posterity,--but yet, performances. They were
followed in 1862 by "Der Fliegende Hollaender," all worthy but
inadequate efforts. Maretzek and Strakosch were the chief figures in
grand opera during this period, but there were spasmodic efforts by
others which need not be recorded.

Pianists were not so numerous as later. Alfred Jaell had appeared and,
in 1854, Dr. William Mason returned from Europe and established himself
in New York, but was not known as one of the traveling virtuosi. He had
a great influence in musical education, for many years. Anna Mehlig
visited America in 1869.

In 1862 Louis M. Gottschalk, a native of New Orleans, returned to
America after a brilliant career in Europe, and he appears to have been
the first American to have made a career as a piano virtuoso.

Violinists were few in comparison to singers,--Miska Hauser, Pablo
Sarasate, in 1850, and Camilla Urso in 1852. Then a space of twenty
years without any great virtuoso.

An important matter in the musical life of America was the establishment
of conservatories. There had already been the Academy of Music in
Boston, which enrolled twenty-two hundred pupils the first year, but the
conservatory idea appears to have developed just after the Civil War,
for we find in 1865 a conservatory of music established with Oberlin
College, in 1871 Illinois College at Jacksonville followed suit