Camilla: A Tale of a Violin / Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso

by Charles Barnard

The third day of the Festival was perhaps the most remarkable of all. The chorus on this day consisted of two thousand public school children, under the musical direction of Mr. Elliot, of San Francisco. The programme consisted of orchestral selections and choruses from the song books used in the public schools, sung by the children. The Hall was packed to its utmost limits and the concert was a perfect success, both in the high character of the music given, and the excellent manner with which it was rendered. 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. This children’s concert was very successful and to gratify the great number of people who wished to attend it was repeated on the following Saturday.

On Thursday evening the seats were removed from the Pavilion and a grand ball was given in compliment to Madam Urso. The next day, Friday, the chorus and the orchestra volunteered and gave her a benefit concert. Like the other concerts of the Festival it was a great success, and gave fifteen thousand people an opportunity to listen to her playing, and to testify to their admiration of her work in their behalf. With the children’s concert on Saturday afternoon the Festival week was brought to a successful close. There was not an accident to mar the pleasure of the occasion and the cause of music in California received an impulse that may be felt to this day. The Mercantile Library received a gift of $27,000 as the result after every bill had been paid and everything promptly and thoroughly cleared up.

In looking at this singular episode in the life of Madam Urso we hardly know which to admire the most, the business skill and energy that carried it through to a financial success, the womanly qualities that could win and hold the willing services of so many people in every walk of life or the artistic culture and insight that arranged the programme so as to at once please and instruct. The concerts were not too classical to drive the people away nor were they wholly popular. In all Madam Urso’s art life it has always been her aim to lift up and instruct her hearers. First allure the people with simple music that they can understand and then give them something from the masters, something a little above their comprehension; a taste of classical music. They would receive a little of the pure and true art and in time they would learn to ask for nothing else. If she gave them nothing but high art they would be repelled and would not listen to any art at all. The concerts in California and those of the festival were arranged on this plan, and she remained on the Pacific coast long enough to see the wisdom of her method and to find that the people came to hear her gladly when she preached the gospel of true and high art. She has ever pursued this high aim and has lived to see a remarkable change come over the American people in their love of music. Of this more farther on.

Soon after the festival Madam Urso made an extensive concert tour through the interior towns of California and everywhere met with a most flattering reception. The musical societies that had sprung into existence at her command to assist in the festival turned out to welcome her in every town, the general interest in music that the event had awakened throughout the State seemed to have spread to most remote and out of the way corners among the mountains, and every town seemed to try to out-do the rest in showing her attention and in crowding her concerts. At Virginia City the choral Society gave her a reception and elected her an honorary member of their association. Each member was expected to wear a badge of a miniature silver brick. They presented her with a real silver brick, (life size) and as it was too heavy to wear or even lift from the floor, they presented two bricks of smaller size, in the shape of ear rings. Certainly it was a most extraordinary present, in admirable keeping with the place and the people.

After visiting all the principal places of interest among the mountains and having a most delightful and interesting journey, Madam Urso returned to San Francisco in May. Here she gave a few concerts and on the 16th of the month started once more for Paris and taking with her, the famous silver brick, a most beautiful diamond pendant, and gold chain, a gift from San Francisco friends, the respect and good wishes of thousands of people whom she had charmed with her music and her warm heart, and $22,000 in gold as the net result of her visit.

On the 18th of the following month she was once more in the quiet of her own home in Paris.

It is not a matter of surprise to find that after Madam Urso’s seven months’ experience in California there came a severe physical reaction. The labor and anxiety of the trip were tremendous, and even her iron constitution gave way, and she broke down utterly the moment the excitement of her journey to Paris was over. For three months she was confined to her room with brain fever, and only left it when she was driven out of the city by the events of the Franco-Prussian war. She was hastily removed from her house on a stretcher, on the 15th of September, and took one of the last trains that left the city before the siege, and was carried on her bed to Boulogne. The change was a fortunate one; the sea air brought a favorable change in her illness, and her health was restored. In October she was sufficiently recovered to bear the journey to England, and she took up her residence in London.

The winter of 1870 and ’71 was passed in private life, but not by any means in idleness. It seemed as if she had now won a position in which she could command her time for study and practice. This great artist, who had commanded the plaudits of two continents, quietly gave herself up to renewed study, to more faithful practice, and to still greater efforts towards perfection in her art. In London she could hear the greatest players in the world. The finest and most scholarly programmes were to be heard every week. She had nothing to do but to hear the best music, study the styles of the masters, catch the splendid inspiration of their works, and to transfer to her own heart and hand whatever of the great and fine in music they had to offer to her. It was a winter of hard work upon her violin, and a season of peace and rest from the dreadful wear and tear of public artist life, and its fruits may to-day be seen in the eminence she has attained in the very highest walks of violin music. The classical concerts that she gave in Boston three years later testify to the conscientious labor that was bestowed upon her instrument during this quiet winter in London.

Here do we see the true artist-soul. We here catch the earnest meaning of Camilla Urso’s life—the intense love of music, the devotion to its highest aims, the eagerness to work, to study and to learn all that is best and true. Genius, indeed, shines in her music, but without these years of honest work the genius would only be a delusion and a mockery. With work it becomes almost divine.

In June of 1871, Madam Urso returned to Paris and spent the summer there in comparative retirement. She gave no public performances, but held musical receptions at her own house once a week, that were attended by all the most noted artists who lived in Paris or visited the city during that summer.