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Updated: July 2, 2025
Totally ignorant of books or any matter outside of their own town, the people must needs fall back on themselves and quietly pick each other to pieces. Everybody had heard that Salvatore Urso, the flute player intended to teach his little girl the violin. Part of the town approved of this bold, audacious step and part of the town thought it eminently improper, if not positively wicked.
Madam Henrietta Sontag was at this time traveling in this country. She had given a series of very successful operatic performances in Boston and New York during the Winter and Spring, and proposed to make a concert tour through the West and South during the Fall and Winter. M. Urso while in New York received a letter from her agent inviting Camilla to join the troupe.
Camilla was a girl. How very shocking in her. Why was she not a boy? A girl. Oh! No it couldn’t be considered for a moment. A girl enter the great Conservatory of Music! Such a thing had never been heard of in the whole history of the world. The Conservatory was not for girls and they couldn’t be admitted. This was discouraging and M. Urso retired from the interview not knowing what to do next.
The fat female, Urso, more than carved the fiddle. She dug sweet morsels of music out of it, all the way from the wish-bone to the part that goes over the fence last. She made it talk Norwegian, and squeezed little notes out of it not bigger than a cambric needle, and as smooth as a book agent.
We have Madam Urso’s testimony that the singing of the children was fully equal to the singing heard in the schools of Boston and other Eastern cities. Madam Urso played a selection of popular airs, including “Home, Sweet Home,” and the national melodies, to the great delight of the young chorus, and the immense audience assembled to hear them.
In consideration of which he would pay M. Urso the sum of thirty thousand francs the first year, sixty thousand francs the second year and one hundred thousand francs the third year. Traveling and hotel expenses for three people were to be paid and altogether it was a flattering offer. Thirty thousand francs in one year! It was too wonderful! They had never dreamed of so much money!
She everywhere called herself an American, and, as it always happens, won the more respect and admiration for her independence. It is always an advantage to be known as an American in Europe, and Madam Urso is only too glad and proud to acknowledge all that she owes to the country of her adoption.
They give us not only an idea of her musical ability, but serve to illustrate the character of the concert pieces in vogue at that time. No musical life would be complete, even if it is that of a “wonder-child” without some information concerning the actual work performed. Mademoiselle Urso was not in any sense limited in her range of pieces.
“Little Camilla Urso, the violinist, but eleven years old, announced a concert at the Masonic Temple for last evening, just too late for notice in this paper. But we had the pleasure,—and a choice one it was—of hearing her the other evening in a company of some forty invited guests, in Mr. Chickering’s saloon.
It would not do to give it up so. Day after day slipped past, the time grew to weeks and still the doors of the Conservatory were fast closed against the child. M. Urso called on Auber several times. Would he not interest himself in the child? Would he only hear her play? No. It was useless. She was a girl. She could not enter.
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