With the publication of this news the maestro was besieged with applications from those who were desirous of becoming pupils. He was at once regarded as the foremost professor in the capital, and his house in George Street, Hanover Square, not only saw numbers of students anxious to enter the profession, but was equally sought out by the aristocracy and wealthy classes of society, as had been the case in Paris.
On November 10, 1848, he was appointed a member of the professional staff at the Royal Academy of Music.
The institution had only been founded twenty-five years previously, when Garcia was eighteen, receiving its charter of incorporation seven years later.
It was very different from the Academy as we know it now. Up to the January of the year in which Garcia joined, it had had in all 767 pupils. It may be of interest to those who have been connected with it during recent years, to learn that the total number of new pupils admitted to the Academy during 1847 were forty, of which thirteen only were members of the sterner sex. Assuming that every pupil stayed at the Royal Academy of Music for a three years' course—the assumption is rather more than doubtful—we should find the average number of pupils per term during the first twenty-five years of its existence to have been exactly ninety. Compare that with the five hundred or more who attend at the present day.
The principal of the Academy at that time was Cipriani Potter, and we find some strangely bygone names upon the staff of professors. Sir Henry Bishop, Mons. Sainton, Moscheles, Goss, George Macfarren, Signor Crivelli, Sir George Smart, Mme. Dulcken, J. B. Cramer, Julius Benedict, Lindley, Chatterton, J. Thomas (the harpist), Signor Puzzi, and as an assistant professor of the pianoforte, Walter Macfarren. These were some of the colleagues with whom Garcia found himself associated when he commenced his work at the Academy.
At the beginning of 1849 there came a reminder of the scenes of revolution through which the maestro had passed a few months before, for Julius Stockhausen followed him to England, to pursue in the quieter atmosphere of London those studies which were so rudely broken up by the alarums and excursions of his duties with the French National Guard. Stockhausen continued to have lessons from the maestro till 1851, and during this period sang at various concerts, by means of which appearances he quickly began to make his mark. During the last year of his studies he sang for the Philharmonic Society no less than three times.
The close of 1852 saw his first appearance on the operatic stage at Mannheim; while between the years 1857 and 1859 he was engaged at the Opéra Comique in Paris, making especial success as the Seneschal in "Jean de Paris." In 1862 he settled in Hamburg as director of the Philharmonic Concerts there and of the "Sing-akademie," a position which he held till the end of the 'Sixties. During this period he took many concert tours with Mme. Schumann, Brahms, and Joseph. In 1870 he was back in England, and stayed till the close of 1871, singing once more at the Philharmonic, Crystal Palace, and other leading concerts. Three years after this he went to live in Berlin, to take direction of the vocal society founded by Stern. Thence he migrated to Frankfort as professor of the Conservatorium, presided over at the time by Raff; and it was in Frankfort that he spent the rest of his days.
His principal pupils were van Rooy, Scheidemantel, and George Henschel; and as a teacher he was generally acknowledged to be the foremost of his time in Germany, as Mathilde Marchesi was in France. It is therefore a matter of some note that during the years in which Manuel Garcia was himself the finest teacher in England, he should, through these two pupils, have had his banner thus upheld upon the Continent.
Among the most promising of Garcia's earliest pupils at the Royal Academy was Kate Crichton, who came to study under him at the commencement of 1849—the year in which Sims Reeves made his operatic début and music-lovers mourned the death of Chopin.
Miss Crichton soon showed that the maestro had not left behind him in Paris his cunning in the training of voices. As the time approached at which the idea of her début was taking shape, the advice of Garcia upon the point was sought by her father. The letter in which was embodied his reply may be quoted as showing the deep interest and sound advice which was ever displayed in his relations with his pupils:—