Also in January 1881
3rd: Composer Max Bruch marries Clara Tuczek, a 26-year-old contralto whom he has met, fallen in love with and become engaged to while on tour in Germany the previous summer. The couple return to Liverpool, where Bruch has been appointed as conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society. Though Bruch tries to insist that
Clara gives up her singing career to become a housewife, she ignores him.
3rd: Anna Mcneill Whistler, mother of the American artist James Whistler, dies aged
76. Tolerant, if not entirely approving, of her son’s flamboyant lifestyle after she moved to England to live with him in 1963, she became famous as the austere subject of his 1871 painting Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, often known simply as Whistler’s Mother. 17th: A major blizzard sweeps across the United Kingdom, bringing transport, trade and industry to a halt. Over the course of three days, temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius are reported, with up to three feet of snow. Violent gales, particularly in the south of England, significantly worsen the situation and over 100 people are reported to die as a result.
19th: Hermann Levi is informed by Richard Wagner that he has been chosen to conduct the premiere of Parsifal at Bayreuth.
However, as Cosima Wagner reveals in her diary, the composer implies that it is on condition that Levi, a Jew, converts to Christianity. ‘Beforehand, we shall go through a ceremonial act with you,’ says Wagner. ‘I hope I shall succeed in finding a formula which will make you completely one of us.’ 25th: American inventor Thomas Edison and his Scottish-born counterpart Alexander Graham Bell come to an agreement to found the Oriental Telephone Company, licensing them to sell telephones in several Asian countries including Japan, China and India, and also Greece, Turkey and South Africa.