With an adventurous spirit, he emigrated to Australia in 1835 with his young wife, hoping to finance himself with his entrepreneurial musical talent as a violinist and pianist. The Australian press hailed him, an ‘Australian Paganini’ and ‘Sydney’s undisputed musical emperor’. Living in Sydney, Wallace opened an academy of music in Bridge Street, under governor Bourke’s patronage. He stayed in Australia three years and wrote many parlour ballads whilst there.

He left to visit the Americas; Chile, Jamaica and Cuba and in Mexico City, conducted the Italian opera season in 1841, and composed a mass there before moving on to New Orleans (1841), Philadelphia (1842) and Boston (1843). Wallace’s target was New York where his fame had preceded him as ‘the first violinist and pianist in this country’. He left New York to tour Germany and the Netherlands before arriving in London for a concert at the Hanover Square Rooms in May 1845. In the programme he played the famous Wallace piano piece, Cracovienne.

The Hanover Street Rooms, 1863

During the period of travel, Wallace had soaked up a number of musical styles and felt he was ready to write an opera. With a book by Edward Fitzball, the composer set to work on Maritana, which was first performed at Drury Lane’s Theatre Royal in November 1843. Both public and press were enthusiastic and soon its music was published and heard everywhere. The opera, with dialogue, toured widely and became as strong a hit as Balfe’s Bohemian Girl.

Following Maritana, Wallace set to work on more ambitious operas, the first of which was Matilda of Hungary (1847), which was not quite the success Maritana might have indicated. The Paris Opera then commissioned Lurline for 1848, but severe problems with eyesight prevented him honouring the commission. It may have been staged as Loreley in Germany in 1854, but this fact hasn’t been confirmed. It was 1860 when Lurline appeared at Covent Garden, London as a première production, with book by Fitzball, again and staged by the Pyne–Harrison company. The popular Victorian interest in the spirit world at this time help secure the opera as a good repertoire piece with its similarities to Weber’s Oberon yet with a wider English style and more through-composed. Lurline toured firstly with the Payne-Harrison, and later with Carl Rosa and Moody Manners opera companies.

Wallace followed a year later with The Amber Witch and used a book by H. Chorley, critic of the Athenæum magazine. This was to be his first through-composed work and as a style was very successful. However, he displaced some of Chorley’s words and introduced a cheery Rondo at the end to replace the plaintive solo Chorley had provided. The premiere, conducted by Charles Hallé, was well received, but the vagaries of the theatre world cut the run short and it never had the exposure it should. The work went touring however and was last picked up by the Moody Manners company.

Love’s Triumph (1862) with libretto by Planché, and The Desert Flower (1863) with book by Harris & Williams were his last works to get to the London stage, but both were not widely reported and never became part of any repertoire. Wallace retained his interest in opera writing, and was working on an opera Estrella in 1864 when he became seriously ill (with heart attacks). He retired to Passy, in Paris and ended his days at the Château de Haget. His body was returned to London and he was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery on 23 October, 1865 where a new headstone was erected in September 2007.

Commemoration of new Wallace headstone, September 2007
with Richard Bonynge and representatives of Waterford's 'Friends of Wallace' group.
 ( photograph courtesy of Andrew  Lamb, Croydon)  

Victorian Opera Northwest's next project is to record Wallace's Lurline with Richard Bonynge conducting. See here for details of the opera. This will be the first recording of the opera.  A recording of the aria, " The Naiad's Spell ", from Lurline , as well as four other Wallace arias, can be found on The Power of Love an anthology of arias from British operas sung by Deborah Riedel with Richard Bonynge conducting on Melba Z-MR301082.  Wallace's Maritana has been released on Marco Polo 8.223406-07.  There was also an older LP recording on Rare Recorded Editions 148/149 of a live performance by the Beaufort Opera.  Excerpts are available on Classics for Pleasure, http://www.emiclassics.co.uk/release.php?id=12749.  Also included are excerpts from Balfe's The Bohemian Girl and Benedict's The Lily of Killarney .  Rosemary Tuck has recorded some of Wallace's piano pieces on Cala Records CACD88042  and Cala Records CACD88044

There are few books on Wallace or even on this era of English opera.    The Romantic Age 1800-1914, edited by Nicholas Temperley, London: Athlone Press, 1981, issued more recently as The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, Vol.5, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988 includes a chapter by Michael Hurd on "Opera: 1830-1865". Other books include George Biddlecombe's English opera from 1834 to 1864 with particular reference to the works of Michael Balfe, New York: Garland Publishing, 1994, which includes a chapter on Wallace and The Lost Chord: Essays on Victorian Music, edited by Nicholas Temperley, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989.

More specifically on Wallace, there is a short memoir by W.H. Gratton Flood written in 1912, recently reprinted and a book, William Vincent Wallace: A vagabond composer by Robert Phelan, Waterford: Celtic Publications, 1994.  Both are available from Raymond Walker, Chairman of Victorian Opera Northwest, as are librettos for Lurline and The Amber Witch. Please contact Raymond at raymondwalker@talktalk.net. The Journal of the British Music Society, Volume 25, 2003 includes an article by David Grant "A Reappraisal of W. Vincent Wallace with new documentary information on his death" , see http://www.musicweb.uk.net/BMS/index.htm  for contact details.