Ravinia Festival

1803

Hector-Louis Berlioz born December 11 in La Côte-St-André, France.
Beethoven's premier performances of his Symphony No. 2 and Piano Concerto No. 3 in Vienna mark his new determination to continue composing despite his encroaching deafness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher whose writings helped define "American transcendentalism," is born.
The United States acquires nearly 600 million acres of land from France. At four cents an acre, the "Louisiana Purchase" is one of the greatest real estate deals in history.

1804

American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote The Scarlet Letter, and George Sand (Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin), who earned one from her numerous affairs-including one with Chopin-are born.
American Vice President Aaron Burr kills his political rival Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. secretary of the treasury, in a duel.

1805

The premiere of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica") marks a turning-point in the history of Western music, bewildering audiences and infuriating critics with its unprecedented scope and originality.
Thomas Jefferson begins second term as U.S. President, and Hans Christian Andersen (whose fairy tales included "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling") is born.

1806

Austrian Emperor Francis I of Austria renounces his title as head of the Holy Roman Empire, ending a political entity that began in 962.
Elizabeth Barrett, future wife of poet Robert Browning, is born; during her life she enjoyed a greater reputation than her husband.

1807

Beethoven presents the premieres of his Symphony No. 4 and Piano Concerto No. 4 at a private concert in Vienna; both works would be eclipsed by their successors numbered 5.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet famous for his long, narrative poems ("Evangeline," "The Courtship of Miles Standish"), is born.

1808

Beethoven's Symphony 5 (arguably the most famous symphony of all time) and Symphony No. 6 (popularized in Walt Disney's Fantasia) receive their premieres in Leipzig.
At the age of 59, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe publishes the first part of his masterpiece, Faust, which would inspire numerous composers, including Berlioz.

1809

Joseph Haydn, the "father of the symphony" and a major influence on the Classical style, dies; Felix Mendelssohn, a Jew whose Romantic music would later be banned by Adolph Hitler, is born.
James Madison becomes fourth U.S. president; Abraham Lincoln is born in Kentucky (he did not move to Illinois, "the Land of Lincoln," until he was 21).
American author Edgar Allan Poe is born, later providing inspiration for the film career of Vincent Price. Also born is British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who became the most prominent poet ("Idylls of the King," "The Charge of the Light Brigade") of the Victorian era.

1810

Fryderyk Chopin and Robert Schumann, two of the three greatest Romantic composers for the piano, are born (the third would appear the following year).
Phineas T. Barnum, American showman who famously said "There's a sucker born every minute," is born; he presented everyone from soprano Jenny Lind to the original Siamese Twins.

1811

Beethoven's fifth and final piano concerto ("Emperor") is premiered, the only one not performed by the composer, who was now totally deaf.
Franz Liszt, the Hungarian keyboard genius who invented the solo piano recital, is born.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Théophile Gautier and W.M. Thackery are born; Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility is published, although written considerably earlier.

1812

Beethoven completes another pair of symphonies, Nos. 7 and 8, which would premiere in 1813 and 1814.
Gioachino Rossini's first opera, Demetria e Polibio, premieres in Rome, launching the greatest opera-composing career of the first half of the 19th century.
George Gordon Byron finishes the first portion of his poem Childe Harold, which would inspire Berlioz's Harold in Italy; English poet Robert Browning and English novelist Charles Dickens are born.
World unrest grows as Napoleon invades Russia-with disastrous results for him and his army-and the U.S. declares war on Britain.

1813

Gioachino Rossini wins his first international acclaim with Tancredi and L'italiana in Algeri.
The two giants of late-Romantic opera, Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, are born.
Jane Austen's second alliteratively titled masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, appears.
The allied forces of Prussia, Austria and Sweden declare war on France; Paris falls, forcing Napoleon to abdicate.
U.S. forces recapture Detroit from the British.

1814

Beethoven completes the third and final version of Fidelio, his only opera; Schubert composes the song "Gretchen am Spinnrade," his first masterpiece in the Lied genre.
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel invents the metronome, the bane of music students ever since.
After Napoleon abdicates, the Congress of Vienna convenes to redivide Europe.
The British burn Washington, D.C.; the Treaty of Ghent officially ends the British-American war on December 24.

1815

Schubert composes perhaps his most famous Lied, "Erlkönig."
The U.S. defeats the British at Battle of New Orleans before news of the Treaty of Ghent arrives.
After rallying France once again, Napoleon is decisively defeated at Waterloo by Wellington.

1816

Berlioz, only 12 years old, experiences his first love, for the 18-year-old Estelle Duboeuf.
Rossini's most enduringly popular opera, The Barber of Seville, premieres in Rome.
Jane Austin's Emma is published, and Charlotte Brontë is born.
Indiana becomes a state, and R.T. Laënnec invents the stethoscope.

1817

Rossini premieres La Cenerentola in Rome and La gazza ladra (best-known today for its ubiquitous overture) in Milan.
James Monroe becomes the fifth U.S. president; and Mississippi becomes a state; Construction begins on the Erie Canal.
Jane Austin dies; Henry David Thoreau is born.

1818

Charles Gounod, most famous for his operatic setting of the Faust story, is born.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley publishes Frankenstein; George Gordon Byron writes the final portion of Childe Harold.
Illinois becomes a state, and further north (at the 49th Parallel) the border between the U.S. and Canada is established.
German social philosopher Karl Marx, theorist of socialism and communism, is born.

1819

Jacques Offenbach, credited with creating the French operetta, is born.
The South continues to take shape as Alabama becomes a state and Florida is purchased from Spain.
George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans) and Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass) are born.
Simón Bolivar conquers the Spanish and becomes president of Greater Colombia (present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama).

1820

As Maine enters the union as a free state, the "Missouri compromise" allows for Missouri to enter the union the following year as a slave state.
Pushkin writes Ruslan and Lyudmila, the basis for Glinka's famous opera with an even more famous overture.
Florence Nightingale and Susan B. Anthony, two women who achieved great success without using the name "George," are born.

1821

Berlioz receives his bachelor's degree in Grenoble and goes to Paris to study medicine.
Weber's Der Freischütz, regarded as the first masterpiece of German Romantic opera, premieres in Berlin.
Napoleon dies and Egyptology is born when Jean François Champollion becomes the first man to decipher hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone, discovered by Napoleon's soldiers in Egypt.
French poet Charles Baudelaire, French novelist Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary) and Russian novelist Feodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment; The Brothers Karamazov) are born.
Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, is born.

1822

César Frank is born; Schubert composes his Symphony No. 8 ("Unfinished").

Berlioz as a young man

1823

Berlioz composes his first opera, Estelle et Némorin, which he later destroys.
Beethoven finishes composing his Missa Solemnis.

1824

Berlioz attends an adaptation of Weber's Der Freischütz, presented under the title Robin des bois, in Paris.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (his last) premieres, as does Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 1.
Austrian symphonist and organist Anton Bruckner and Bed_ich Smetana (The Bartered Bride opera, Má vlast cycle of tone poems) are born.
Poet George Gordon Byron (whose Childe Harold, Mazeppa, The Corsair and The Siege of Corinth all inspired musical works) dies.
John Quincy Adams is elected president by the House of Representatives after none of the candidates in the national election wins a majority of votes.

1825

Johann Strauss II ("the Waltz King") is born; Antonio Salieri, best known today as the villain of Amadeus, dies.
Pushkin writes another operatic inspiration, Boris Godunov.

1826

Berlioz begins full-time music studies at the Paris Conseratoir.
Mendelssohn composes his Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream (although the rest of the incidental music, including the famous Wedding March, wouldn't be composed until 1843).
Stephen Foster, the quintessential Southern composer who wrote "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races" and "Old Folks at Home," is born-in Pittsburgh!
Carl Maria von Weber dies (see 1821).
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, dies.
James Fenimore Cooper, the first great American novelist, writes Last of the Mohicans, one of the famous "Leatherstocking Tales" that romanticized the American wilderness.

Harriet Smithson as Ophelia

1827

Berlioz attends his first Shakespeare play, Hamlet, and falls passionately in love with the actress portraying Ophelia, Harriet Smithson, who became the inspiration for his Symphonie Fantastique.
Schubert composes the song-cycle Der Winterreise, a somber foreshadowing of his own impending death.
Beethoven dies in Vienna; among the torch-bearers in his funeral procession-attended by over 10,000 Viennese-is Franz Schubert.
John James Audubon publishes the first installment in his landmark study Birds of North America.
John Walker, an English apothecary, develops the first sulphur friction matches, revolutionizing the way fire is started.

1828

Berlioz reads Goethe's Faust.
Franz Schubert finishes his ninth symphony ("The Great") and dies at age 31 in Vienna.
Norwegian dramatist and poet Henrik Ibsen (Peer Gynt, Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House), Russian novelist Leo Tolstoi (War and Peace, Anna Karenina) and French novelist Jules Verne (who originated modern science fiction) are born.
Noah Webster publishes the first American Dictionary, adding a new catchphrase to the vocabularies of American parents: "Go look it up."

1829

An interest in music of the past is ignited when Felix Mendelssohn conducts a revival of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Berlin.
Rossini's final opera, Guillaume Tell, establishes the genre of French grand opéra, marked by enormous five-act length, lavish spectacle and dance.
Louis Gottschalk, one of the first important American composers, is born. Praised by Chopin and Berlioz, he was enormously popular during his brief (40-year) life.
Andrew Jackson becomes the seventh president of the United States.
First U.S. patent is granted for a typewriter; youngsters unfamiliar with the term can think of it as a primitive form of the word processor.

1830

On his fourth attempt, Berlioz wins the Prix de Rome, which entails a period of study in Italy; before leaving Paris he arranges the first performance of his Symphonie fantastique.
Hans von Bülow, the German conductor who created the concept of the "Three B's," is born. He gained notoriety as the first husband of Franz Liszt's daughter Cosima, who later left him for Richard Wagner.
Gaetano Donizetti scores his first major operatic success with his Anna Bolena.
American poet Emily Dickinson born; now regarded as one of the greatest American poets of all time, she published only seven poems during her lifetime.
Victor Hugo's play Hernani premieres; a landmark of Romantic drama, it shocked audiences by portraying the assassination of a living monarch.
Joseph Smith founds the Mormon religion in Fayette, New York.

1831

Vincenzo Bellini produces two of his most celebrated operas, La sonnambula and Norma.
Giacomo Meyerbeer begins his reign as king of French grands opéras with Robert le Diable. A scandalous dance divertissement, portraying the ghosts of unchaste nuns, marks birth of Romantic ballet.
Victor Hugo produces one of his greatest novels, Notre Dame de Paris, best known to Americans in its various film versions as The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Chloroform, one of the first anesthesias for surgery, is invented.

1832

Berlioz conducts Symphonie fantastique and its sequel, Lelio, ou Le retour à la vie, at a concert attended by Harriet Smithson.
Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 5 (actually the second one he composed), premieres in Berlin; Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore, his first great comic opera, premieres in Milan.
Two popular American authors, Louisa May Alcott and Horatio Alger, are born, as is the English writer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland).
Two giants of Romantic literature, Goethe and Sir Walter Scott, die.

Harriet
Smithson

1833

Over the objections of both their families, Berlioz and Harriet Smithson are married.
Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 (actually his third) receives its premiere.
Johannes Brahms is born in Hamburg.

1834

Berlioz's premieres his second symphony, Harold in Italy, originally commissioned as a viola showpiece for Nicolò Paganini (who never performed it). Harriet Berlioz gives birth to a son, Louis.
Franz Liszt premieres his first work for piano and orchestra, the Grand fantaisie symphonique, based upon themes from Berlioz's Lelio, in Paris.
Wagner completes his first extant opera, Die Feen, which is not performed until 1888.
Abraham Lincoln enters the Illinois legislature.
French artist Edgar Dégas and American artist James Whistler (with the famous mother) are born.
Cyrus Hall McCormick patents the reaping machine.

1835

Vincenzo Bellini dies at the age of 33; French composer Camille Saint-Saëns and conductor Theodore Thomas (founder of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) are born.
Donizetti's most enduring opera, Lucia di Lammermoor, premieres.
American writer Samuel L. Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) is born in Missouri.
Two great American philanthropists, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and merchant Marshall Field, are born in Scotland and Massachusetts, respectively.

1836

Wagner conducts the first (and only) performance of his opera Das Liebesverbot in Magdeburg; Léo Delibes (French composer of the ballets Sylvia and Coppelia) is born.
Davy Crockett is killed at the Alamo.
Arkansas becomes a state.

1837

Belioz composes and premieres his Grande Messe des Morts (Requiem), which was commissioned by the French government.
Martin Van Buren becomes the eighth U.S. President.
The electric telegraph is patented.

Niccolò
Paganini

1838

Berlioz's opera Benvenuto Cellini premieres in Paris; a dismal failure, with only three performances, it was the last of his works to be performed at the Paris Opéra during his life. Paganini makes a gift to Berlioz of 20,000 francs.
Georges Bizet (Carmen) is born in Paris.
Victoria is crowned Queen of Great Britain.

1839

Paganini's gift allows Berlioz to compose and premiere his third symphony, Roméo et Juliette, featuring vocal soloists and a chorus. He is awarded the French government's Order of the Légion d'Honneur.
Mendelssohn conducts the premiere of Schubert's Symphony No. 9 ("The Great") in Leipzig; Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (Boris Godunov, Pictures at an Exhibition) is born.
French artist Paul Cézanne is born.
Charles Goodyear develops vulcanization of rubber and the first bicycle is built in Scotland. Coincidence?
American oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of the University of Chicago, is born.

1840

The French government commissions Berlioz to compose his Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale, commemorating the soldiers who died in the fight for Algeria, and again requiring mammoth performing forces.
Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 2 (his fourth) premieres in Leipzig; Franz Liszt gives the world's first solo piano recitals in London.
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky is born in Votkinsk, Russia.
Authors Thomas Hardy (Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles) and Émile Zola (Nana) are born.
Impressionist painter Pierre Renoir and sculptor Auguste Rodin ( "The Thinker") are born in France.

Hector Berlioz

1841

Berlioz composes recitatives for the Paris Opéra's production of Weber's Die Freischütz, the only music of his performed publicly in Paris that year. He also finishes the first (piano-vocal) version of his song-cycle Les nuits d'été ("Summer Nights").
Antonín Dvorák is born; Mendelssohn conducts the premiere of Schumann's Symphony No. l ("Spring") in Leipzig; Adolphe Adam's ballet Giselle premieres at the Paris Opéra.
Adolphe Sax invents the saxophone.
One month after his inauguration, William Harrison becomes the first U.S. president to die in office. His vice president John Tyler succeeds him as tenth U.S. President.

1842

Berlioz wins success as a conductor at his first concert outside France, in Brussels.
Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3 (his last) premieres in Liepzig; Wagner enjoys his first major success with the premiere of Rienzi in Dresden; Giuseppe Verdi wins international acclaim with the triumphant Milan premiere of his third opera, Nabucco, at La Scala.
Italian opera composer Arrigo Boito (Mefistofele), French opera composer Jules Massenet (Werther, Manon, Don Quichotte) and English composer Sir Arthur Sullivan (of "Gilbert &" operetta fame) are born.
The New York Philharmonic Society is founded and gives its first concert.

1843

Berlioz undertakes an ambitious tour through Germany, during which he meets a young singer named Marie Recio, who would become his second wife. He also publishes his Grand traité d'instrumentation e d'orchestration modernes ("Great Treatise on Instrumentation and Modern Orchestration"), which becomes a standard work on the subject. (Richard Strauss would revise it in 1904.)
Wagner has only a modest success with the Dresden premiere of Der fliegende Höllander ("The Flying Dutchman"); Donizetti scores a triumph with Don Pasquale at the Théâtre-italien in Paris.
Edvard Grieg is born in Bergen, Norway.
Charles Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol.
The world's first night club opens in Paris.

1844

Verdi's opera Ernani, based upon Victor Hugo's influential but controversial play, enjoys a major success at its Venice premiere.
French actress Sarah Bernhardt, French novelist Anatole France and German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche are born.
Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, is murdered by an angry mob in Carthage, Illinois.

1845

Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, one of the most popular of all time, premieres at the Leipzig Gewandhaus; Wagner's Tannhäuser is unenthusiastically received at its Dresden premiere; Gabriel Fauré is born in Pamiers, France.
Texas and Florida become states; James Polk becomes the 11th U.S. president.
Edgar Allan Poe wins international fame with publication of The Raven and Other Poems.
The U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis opens.
The first game of modern baseball is played in Hoboken, New Jersey.

1846

The premiere of Berlioz's La damnation de Faust is indifferently received by the Paris audience.
Edward Lear publishes The Book of Nonsense, a collection of illustrated limericks and humorous verse.
Mexico's war with Texas leads to all-out war with the U.S.
The sewing machine is patented by Elias Howe; The Smithsonian Institution is founded in Washington; Iowa becomes a state.

1847

More celebrated abroad than at home, Berlioz tours to Russia and England.
Felix Mendelssohn dies.
The Brontë sisters produce two classics, Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights; Bram Stoker, who would become famous for writing Dracula (1897), is born.
American inventors Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, who planted the seeds of modern-day irritants boom boxes and cell phones, are born.

1848

Berlioz's father dies.
Liszt composes the world's first "symphonic poem," a term he coined.
After being moved from a sanitorium near Paris by his nephew, Gaetano Donizetti dies at the age of 50 in Bergamo.
Franz Josef becomes emperor of Austria; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels write their views of class struggle in the Communist Manifesto.
Wisconsin becomes a state.

1849

Berlioz composes his monumental Te Deum.
Paris audiences are astonished at the "ice skating" ballet in Meyerbeer's Le Prophète, in which dancers performed in recently invented roller skates.
Chopin dies in Paris at the age of 39.
Charles Dickens publishes David Copperfield.

1850

Franz Liszt conducts the premiere of Wagner's Lohengrin in Weimar; Wagner, then in exile in Switzerland, would not hear his opera performed until 1861.
President Zachary Taylor dies; Millard Fillmore becomes 13th U.S. president.
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter appears; Scottish writer Robert Lewis Stevenson (Treasure Island, A Child's Garden of Verse, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) is born in Edinburgh.

1851

Liszt finishes his final version of the "Trancendental Etudes"; Verdi's Rigoletto, based upon Victor Hugo's 1832 play Le Roi s'amuse, has a sensationally successful premiere in Venice.
Cuba declares independence.
Two great American classics-Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables and Melville's Moby Dick-appear; Harriet Beecher Stowe begins the serialized publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which would sway national opinion and change the course of American history.
The New York Times begins publication.

1852

Alexandre Duas fils transforms his 1848 novel La Dame aux Camélias ("Lady of the Camelias") into a play that would become the basis for Verd's La traviata.
Henry Wells and William Fargo establish Wells, Fargo & Co., offering express mail delivery to California.

1853

The premieres of Il trovatore in Rome and La traviata in Venice cement Verdi's reputation as the most celebrated Italian opera composer in the world.
Franklin Pierce becomes the14th president of the United States.
The epitome of the "mad genius," Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh is born.

Maria Recio

1854

Berlioz's "Sacred trilogy" L'Enfance du Christ premieres in Paris; Harriet Smithson Berlioz dies and Hector, long estranged from her, marries Maria Recio; he also dedicates the publication of his Damnation de Faust to Liszt.
Originally composed as an introduction to a choral work, Liszt's Les Préludes is presented as a symphonic poem in Weimar for the first time, becoming his most popular orchestral work.
Engelbert Humperdinck (Hänsel und Gretel) is born near Bonn.
Henry David Thoreau publishes his most famous book, Walden, an expression of American transcendentalism, a literary and philosophical movement celebrating the divinity of man and nature.

Richard Wagner

1855

During a conducting engagement in London, Berlioz enjoys a cordial meeting with Richard Wagner; his 1849 Te Deum receives its premiere at the Paris Exposition Universelle, which concludes with Berlioz conducting three concerts utilizing 1,200 musicians (not counting chorus and military band!).
Longfellow publishes his most famous work, The Song of Hiawatha, as does Walt Whitman with his Leaves of Grass, which has been called the most influential volume of poems in the history of American literature.

1856

Robert Schumann dies in a private asylum near Bonn.
British writers George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde are born.
Gustave Flaubert publishes his most famous novel, Madame Bovary, in a Parisian journal.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, is born in Moravia.

1857

Liszt premieres his "Faust" Symphony in Weimar, dedicating the piece to Berlioz.
Liszt's daughter Cosima marries conductor Hans von Bülow.
English composer Edward Elgar is born.

1858

Italian opera composers Ruggiero Leoncavallo (Pagliacci) and Giacomo Puccini (Tosca, La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Turandot) are born.
Minnesota becomes a state.

1859

Charles Gounod's Faust, the most popular operatic setting of the story (and for a period the most popular opera in the world), has a successful premiere at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris.
Dickens publishes A Tale of Two Cities; English mystery writer Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes stories) and English poet A.E. Houseman are born.
Darwin publishes On the Origin of the Species.
Construction begins on the Suez Canal.

1860

Austrian symphonist Gustav Mahler, Polish piano virtuoso Ignace Paderewski, Austrian lieder composer Hugo Wolf and French opera composer Gustave Charpentier (Louise) are born.
English playwright and novelist James M. Barrie (Peter Pan) and Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov (The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard) are born.
The first practical internal-combustion engine built.

1861

George Eliot publishes Silas Marner, a staple of high school English classes; Dickens publishes Great Expectations.
Abraham Lincoln becomes the 16th U.S. president.
Kansas becomes a state; the American Civil War begins.

1862

Berlioz's final opera, Béatrice et Bénédict, premieres in Baden-Baden. An opéra comique, it includes spoken dialogue.
French impressionist composer Claude Debussy and English composer Frederick Delius are born. Ludwig Köchel publishes his landmark catalogue of Mozart's works.
Victor Hugo publishes Les Misérables, most familiar to audiences today as the basis of a long-running musical; Leo Tolstoy begins writing his masterwork War and Peace (it would be finished in 1869).
Lion Foucault measures the speed of light.

1863

The second half of Berlioz's epic opera Les troyens, under the title Les troyens à Carthage, is performed at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris; Berlioz never saw the first half (La prise de Troie) performed.
Italian verismo opera composer Pietro Mascagni (Cavalleria rusticana) is born.
On January 1, Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves to be free. In November, he delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of a national cemetery on a Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.
American industrialist Henry Ford, who successfully applied the principles of the assembly line to the mass production of automobiles, and newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst are born.
West Virginia becomes a state.

1864

German opera composer Richard Strauss (Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier) is born.
Abraham Lincoln is re-elected president.
Maximilian, brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Josef, becomes emperor of Mexico.
French painter and lithographer Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, best known for the posters he created for the Moulin Rouge cabaret, is born.
French chemist Louis Pasteur invents pasteurization, making milk, beer, wine and orange juice safe to drink.
The Geneva Convention brings delegates from 16 nations to Switzerland to establish rules for the treatment of prisoners of war, the sick and the wounded.
Nevada becomes a state.

1865

Hans von Bülow conducts the world premeire in Munich of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. With its daring approach to chromaticism and dissonance, it is arguably the most musically influential opera of all time.
French composer Paul Dukas (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) and Finnish symphonist Jean Sibelius (The Swan of Tuonela, Finlandia) are born.
The Civil War ends after Lee surrenders to Grant on April 9; on April 14 Abraham Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington; Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery in America.
English author Rudyard Kipling (Gunga Din, The Jungle Book, Just So Stories) and Irish poet William Butler Yeats are born; Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is founded.
The first Pullman sleeping cars appear in U.S.; Chicago's Union Stockyards open.

1866

The first version of Smetana's The Bartered Bride premieres in Prague; now considered the quintessential Czech operatic masterpiece, it gained wide popularity only after its final revision in 1870.
Eccentric French composer Eric Satie, whose works would be seen as a reaction against Romanticism, is born.
British science-fiction author Herbert George ("H.G.") Wells (The War of the Worlds; The Invisible Man) is born; Dostoyevsky publishes Crime and Punishment.
Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, credited as the originator of abstract art, is born.
Alfred Nobel invents dynamite; the first permanently successful transatlantic telegraphic cable is laid.
Austria is defeated in the Austro-Prussian War.

1867

Berlioz is devastated when his son Louis dies of yellow fever in Havana.
Johann Strauss II composes his waltz masterpiece, "On the Beautiful Blue Danube," one of the most famous melodies in all of music; Verdi premieres the original five-act version of Don Carlos at the Paris Opéra.
Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini and chemist and physicist Marie Curie, discoverer of radium, are born.
The Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy is established, whereby Hungarians gained autonomy over their internal affairs while maintaining a unified empire administered from Vienna.
Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, after personally leading his forces at the seige of Querétaro, is killed; Benito Juárez is elected president.
Nebraska becomes a state; U.S. purchases Alaska from Russia; the Dominion of Canada is established.
Marx publishes the first volume of his magnum opus, Das Capital, laying the foundation of international socialism.

Berlioz in the last year of his life

1868

Brahms's Ein Deutsches requiem, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1 and Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg have their premieres; Rossini dies.
Louisa May Alcott achieves fame and wealth with the publication of her Little Women.
The Armour meat-packing factory opens in Chicago.
The game of badminton is invented; the first professional American baseball club is formed.

1869

Berlioz dies in Paris on March 8.
Cosima Liszt leaves her first husband, Hans von Bülow, and marries Richard Wagner, whose Das Rheingold (the first opera of his four-opera Ring cycle), has its premiere in Munich that same year.
Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant becomes the18th president of the United States.
Two men who would have an enormous impact in the 20th century-French painter, sculptor and lithographer Henri Matisse and American architect Frank Lloyd Wright-are born.
The first intercollegiate football game (Princeton-Rutgers) is played, in New Jersey.


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