William Vincent Wallace
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Disambiguation, William Wallace is also the name of a Scottish composer
William Vincent Wallace (March 11 1812 - October 1865) was an Irish composer born at Colbeck Street, Waterford, Ireland. His father, of County Mayo, was a regimental bandmaster.
Wallace learned as a boy to play several instruments, and became a leading violinist in Dublin and a fine pianist. Under the tuition of his father he early wrote pieces for the bands and orchestras of his native area. At the age of 18 he was organist of the Thurles Roman Catholic Cathedral and taught piano at the Ursuline Convent. He fell in love with a pupil, Isabella Kelly, whose father consented to their marriage in 1831 on condition that Wallace became a Roman Catholic and took the name of Vincent.
Restless and adventurous as a young man, Wallace, with his wife and infant son, his sister Elisabeth, a soprano, and his brother Wellington, a flautist, emigrated in 1835 to Australia and gave family concerts. The family went to Sydney in 1836 and opened the first Australian music school. Wallace also imported pianos and gave recitals in Australia under the patronage of General Sir Richard Bourke. Having separated from his wife, he began a roving career. Wallace claimed that from Australia he went to New Zealand, made a whaling-voyage in the South seas, visited most of the interior provinces of India and spent some time in tiger-hunting, and finally visited Chile, Peru and Buenos Aires, giving concerts in the large cities of those countries. However, it is suspected that many of these stories were manufactured or embellished. In 1841, Wallace conducted Italian opera in Mexico, and in the early 1840s, he made a successful tour of the United States and helped to found the New York Philharmonic Society.
He returned to London in 1845 and made various appearances as a pianist. In November of that year, his opera Maritana was performed at Drury Lane with great success and was later presented in Vienna, at the Covent Garden and in Australia.[1] Wallace's sister, Elisabeth, appeared at Covent Garden in the title role in 1848. Maritana was followed by Matilda of Hungary (1847), Lurline (1860), The Amber Witch (1861), Love's Triumph (1862) and The Desert Flower (1863). He also published a number of compositions for the piano. Cala Records CACD88044.
Vincent Wallace was a cultivated man and an accomplished musician, whose work as an operatic composer, at a period by no means encouraging to music in England, has a distinct historical value. Like Michael Balfe, he was born an Irishman, and his reputation as one of the few composers known beyond the British Isles at that time is naturally coupled with Balfe's. But he was a finer artist and a more original musician.
In 1850, Wallace became an American citizen after a marriage in New York with Helen Stoepel, a pianist. In later years he became almost blind, and he died in poor circumstances on 12 October 1865 leaving a widow and two children.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
