HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Ole Bull at TH Opera House 135 years ago

By Mike McCormick

TERRE HAUTE — During the early months of 1872 — 135 years ago — the magnificent Terre Haute Opera House was in its second season.

The elaborate five-story French Renaissance amphitheater — costing $160,000 and labeled “the handsomest and most complete opera house in the West” — hosted the world’s finest artists.

Yet the announcement that the great Norwegian violinist Ole Bull would present a concert at the opera house on April 11, 1872 was cause for celebration and anticipation among the most cultured citizens.

Already, the 1871-72 season was a special one. Among the many performances offered during the first few months of 1872 were Tony Pastor, who became the “Father of Vaudeville;” actor McKee Rankin; actress Katie Putnam, Theodore Thomas and his orchestra, statesman Frederick Douglass, suffrage and temperance journalist Mary Livermore, Irish Shakespearian actor Lawrence Barrett, theatrical legend Joseph Jefferson and “The Black Crook,” the theatrical musical.

Charismatic, Bull was Norway’s first international star. Henrik Wergeland, a contemporary Norwegian poet, wrote, “The greatest marvel is that Bull has brought Norway home to Norsemen. Most people knew the country folk songs but were ashamed to admire them.”

Ole Bull loved his native country, forever the land of Vikings and sagas. His ambition to revitalize Norwegian arts led him to found the National Theater at Bergen, the city of his birth, in 1849.

He also was an admirer of the U.S., its institutions and its audiences. During his first tour of the U.S. between 1843 and 1845, he was enthusiastically received everywhere.

After that experience, Bull decided he should consolidate his passions by establishing “New Norway,” a colony in eastern Pennsylvania, to offer a home for his countrymen who were poverty victims.

In 1852, he bought 11,144 acres the southeast corner of Potter County and initiated establishing four settlements called Oleana, New Bergen, New Norway and Valhalla. Bull planned to build his own “castle” at the latter site.

Norwegian emigrants began settling there in 1853 and Bull provided many with financial assistance; however, the colony was destined for failure. Previous owners had excluded most tillable land from the legal description. Disillusioned, Bull sold the acreage back to the original owners and returned to Norway where his wife, Felice, the mother of his five children, died in 1862.

During a trip to the U.S. in 1869, Bull met 18-year old Sara Thorp, daughter of a Wisconsin lumber merchant. The couple wed in 1870 and resided in Madison, Wis., and in “Elmwood,” the home of American poet James Russell Lowell in Cambridge, Mass.

He later built a “cottage” on the Isle of Lyso, a 650-acre island in the North Sea.

Largely influenced as a youth by German composer-violinist Louis Spohr and Niccolo Paganini, Bull became obsessed with mimicking the Italian violinist mannerisms.

Bull numbered among his many friends Otto von Bismarck, Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Von Moltke, Hungarian freedom fighter Louis Kossuth, dramatist Henrik Ibsen, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hungarian pianist-composer Franz Liszt, Polish pianist-composer Frederic Chopin and German composer Felix Mendelssohn.

The theatrical tour which ended in 1872 — shortly after Bull’s appearance in Terre Haute — was his last of five America junkets. Ole, Sara and their young daughter returned to Norway to reside on the “Isle of Light” but they frequently came to the U.S. for visits

Bull’s April 11, 1872 concert was the only one he presented at the Terre Haute Opera House before his death from cancer on Aug. 17, 1880.

Wherever he performed, he was cherished. And he sought to please. On Feb 5, 1876 — his 66th birthday — he played the violin atop of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Newspaper reviews of the 61-year old artist’s local performance in 1872 were extremely favorable. The Terre Haute Daily Express reported:

“Ole Bull was received with such hearty applause as has seldom greeted any musician in this city. He played as only he can play, holding his audience spellbound and carrying their feelings to the highest pitch of enthusiasm.

“He was encored three times, but declined to honor their compliment, except with a Chesterfieldian bow. He gave what was ‘nominated in the bond,’ no more; but it was so good that one could not complain.

“Miss Gertrude Orme has a full rich soprano voice, and perfectly clear articulation. Her part of the programme was extremely well received, and she left a fine impression.”

The Terre Haute Evening Gazette, in part, offered:

“The appearance of the patriarchal artist, Ole Bull, was greeted with applause as he nimbly shuffled himself in the front of the stage, bearing with him his ‘pet’ violin.

“His rendition of ‘Allegro Malstone,’ which followed, was enthusiastically applauded, and persistent endeavors were made to provoke a response by him, by those who did not know Ole Bull well enough to know that he is constitutionally opposed to responding to encores.

“On his second regular appearance in the rendition of his part of the programme he favored the audience with a piece of his own composition, entitled “The Nightengale,” which was rendered in the highest order of the musical art, as was each rendition.

“As an artist in this special line, he is king overall. Nowhere in the world has he an acknowledged rival much less a superior.

“While (Henri) Vieuxtemps and others are great artists and first-class violinists, they do not approximate the unrivaled genius of Ole Bull.”

He has not been forgotten. Each year on May 17, school children in Bergen transport the country’s colors to the grave of Ole Bull, credited with awakening Norway’s national consciousness.

And, on Sept. 2, 2002, several hundred people congregated at Ole Bull State Park in Potter County, Pa., to formally commemorate the 150th anniversary of great violinist’s dream for a Norwegian utopia.