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A Tale of Two 'Border Cities 71
"the Original Kneass Opera Troupe/' the first date on their road tour being Cincinnati/ the second Louisville.8
For their Pittsburgh concert of August 19, 1847, the program was advertised6 to include "Song—first time—'What Can a Fairy's Dream be'; by Miss Bruce." This was Stephen's song, published later in that year by W. C. Peters, Cincinnati, as "What Must a Fairy's Dream Be? Ballad, Written & Composed for and respectfully Dedicated to Miss Mary H. Irwin." Possibly Miss Mary, to whom Stephen doubtless sent a dedicatory copy, herself supplied the song to Kneass. Surely she went with her friends to hear it. So, in this quite nice place where all the quite nice people of Pittsburgh were flocking, she listened enraptured as Miss Bruce sang:
What must a Fairy's dream be Who drinks of the morning dew?
Miss Bruce repeated the song at the concerts of August 2,0 and 21.9
We know without question how Stephen's second song "Away Down South" came to be sung in the Kneass concerts. Morrison Foster, then Jiving in Pittsburgh, wrote to Stephen10 urging him to compete for a silver cup to be awarded, according to the newspaper advertisement,11 "to the author of such original words of an Ethiopian Melody or Extrava-ganze to be set to music by the present Troupe, as shall be decided the best by the spontaneous |
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