An Excerpt From

Unsung: A History of Women in American Music

By Christine Ammer

If piano and harp were the only generally acceptable instruments for women in the mid-nineteenth century, the appearance of women violinists must have been startling indeed. Yet the Musical Gazette of April 26, 1847, states without further comment, perhaps dismissing them as amateurs, that "Messrs. Covert and Dodge have given several concerts in Boston and vicinity assisted by two Misses Macomber, from Maine. One of these ladies plays the violin and the other the violoncello." But only five years later, in 1852, a ten-year-old girl violinist inspired both New York and Boston critics to lavish praise on her performance of standard works by De Bériot and Grétry, Paganini and Viotti. Even at the age of ten Camilla Urso was no amateur. She had been performing before a paying public for several years, and during the remaining half-century of her career she was to inspire hundreds of other girls to take up the violin.

Who was this prodigy? Camilla Urso was born in Nantes on June 13, 1842, the oldest child and only daughter of a Sicilian flutist, Salvatore Urso, and a Portuguese singer. Her father played in theater and opera orchestras, and on Sundays served as church organist. At the age of four Urso began to go with her father to the theater when he was performing, and at not quite six she began, after a year of insistent entreaty, her first violin lessons, with the theater orchestra’s concertmaster, Félix Simon. The general reaction to the child's lessons was a blend of amusement and outrage. Nevertheless, she first appeared in public at a benefit concert for the widow of the orchestra's bassoonist, who had died suddenly, and she was, after initial guffaws, a resounding success.