Recitals and Recitations

Camilla Urso's Concert Company featured French-born violinist Urso, pianist Auguste Sauret, and singers J. C. Bartlett, tenor; Clara Poole, contralto; Gaston Gottschalk, basso; and Louise Oliver, soprano. In the mid-19^th century, when Urso was a young girl, orchestral instruments were played by boys and men. After persuading her parents to let her take up the violin, and considerable practice, she became the first girl admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, where she graduated with first prize in the final examinations. Urso made her first American tour at the age of ten, and became one of America's foremost performers and music educators, as well as a spokeswoman for the cause of women as orchestral players. In 1867, more than 60 professional musicians in Boston signed and published a testimonial which characterized her playing as having a "complete repose of manner, largeness of style, broad, full and vigorous attacking of difficulties, utmost delicacy of sentiment and feeling, wonderful staccato, [and a] remarkable finish in trills, with an intonation as nearly perfect as the human ear will allow.… When to these are added a comprehensive mind, with a warm musical soul vibrating to its work, we have an artist who may nearly be called a phenomenon in the womanly form of Camilla Urso."