Background

William Vincent Wallace was born on March 11, 1812, at Colbeck Street, Waterford, Ireland. Both of his parents were Irish; his father, Spencer Wallace of County Mayo, one of four children, who was born in Killala, County Mayo in 1789, became a regimental bandmaster with the North Mayo Militia based in Ballina. William was born while the regiment was stationed for one year in Waterford, one of several successive postings in Ireland and the UK.

Education

William spent his early life in Ballina, where his father’s tuition laid the foundations of his virtuosic violin and piano technique.

Career

At 16 Wallace was the first violin in the Theatre Royal orchestra, Dublin; at 18 he was organist of the Thurles Roman Catholic Cathedral and taught piano at the Ursuline Convent. He also served as a sub-leader of the Theatre Royal orchestra; after hearing Paganini he practiced night and day till he became a virtuoso.

In November 1835 he emigrated to Hobart Town with his wife and infant son, his sister Elisabeth, a soprano, and his brother Wellington, a flutist. After one concert the family went to Sydney in January 1836 and in Bridge Street opened the first Australian music school. Vincent also imported pianos for his musical repository in Hunter Street, and during 1837 he gave recitals in Sydney, Parramatta, and Windsor'. Governor Sir Richard Bourke was Wallace's constant patron.

In January 1838 at St Mary's Cathedral he organized the first music festival in Australia; in February he sailed secretly for Valparaiso, leaving debts of £2000. From 1838 to 1843 he allegedly had wild adventures in three continents although he certainly made a successful tour of the United States and helped to found the New York Philharmonic Society. In 1844 he was in Germany and Holland; in 1845 he gave piano recitals in London and his opera Maritana was triumphantly produced at Drury Lane, and later at Vienna and Covent Garden. Maritana reached Australia in 1849; there is no real evidence for the tradition that Wallace composed it either in Sydney or Tasmania. His Lurline (1860) earned £50,000 for the management of Covent Garden but nothing for Wallace; other operas were Matilda of Hungary, The Amber Witch and The Desert Flower, and the British Museum catalogue of smaller works fills a hundred pages.

He died in 1865 at Château de Bagen, Sauveterre de Comminges, Haute Garonne, but was buried in Kensal Green, London.

Achievements

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  William Vincent Wallace is remembered as an opera composer of note, with key works such as Maritana (1845) and Lurline (1847/60), but he also wrote a large amount of piano music (including some virtuoso pieces) that was much in vogue in the 19th century. His ballads were performed by some famous singers of the time.

Works

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• music

  • To My Star
  • Songs By William Vincent Wallace
  • The Meeting of the Waters
  • Maritana
  • Opera Fantasies & Paraphrases 1
  • Lurline

Religion

William Vincent Wallace became a Catholic to marry his sweetheart Isabella Kelly.

Views

Quotations: "Music is an art that knows no locality but heaven."

Personality

Wallace was a cultivated person and an accomplished musician. As a man, he was charming but unprincipled, and his habitual untruthfulness makes it hard to determine the real facts about him.

Connections

William fell in love with a pupil, Isabella Kelly, whose father consented to their marriage in 1832 on condition that Wallace become a Roman Catholic. In 1838, he separated from his wife, leaving her and his son in Sydney with relatives. Wallace went through a form of marriage in New York with Helen Stoepel (d.1887), a pianist, by whom he had two sons, both of whom committed suicide.

Father:

Spencer Wallace

Wife:

Hélène Stoepel

Sister:

Elisabeth Waterford

Wife:

Isabella Kelly

patron:

Sir Richard Bourke

Sir Richard Bourke was an Irish-born British Army officer who served as Governor of New South Wales from 1831 to 1837.

References

• William Vincent Wallace: Composer, Virtuoso and Adventurer
• William Vincent Wallace: A vagabond composer
• The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland