Scan 33
Camilla: a tale of a violin, being the artist life of Camilla Urso, 1874
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 23. See the scan on archive.org.
1and, really, there was nothing else to talk about. Imagine the excitement when it was announced that the little Camilla would give a public performance at the Hotel de Ville.
3It came about in this way. The Bassoon in the orchestra died. That was the curious way they expressed it. The instrument had not died, but the man who played it. He left a widow and one child, and no money. Nobody had ever heard of an orchestral player who had left much. The pay was too small for him to save anything, and so the poor widow was left without a franc. Of course, they must give her a benefit concert. M. Urso heard of it, and on talking it over with Felix Simon they decided to prepare Camilla to take part in the charity concert for the benefit of the widow of the Bassoon. So it happened that she took up the "air varié" as her first piece.
5It takes a long time to do anything in Europe. Here we would decide to give a concert, advertise it, and hire the hall all in the same day, and have it all over within a week. In Nantes it took six weeks to arrange everything, see who would offer to play, and to properly announce the event. This slow and deliberate way of doing things was an advantage to Camilla as it gave her plenty of time to study the piece and to commit it to memory past forgetting.
7They collected a grand orchestra. Mdlle. Masson, who was quite a fine artist volunteered to sing, and the
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.