Louis Moreau Gottschalk was one of America’s first matinee idols and international superstars. A child prodigy as a pianist, he left his home city of New Orleans for Paris at the age of 12 to learn his craft. He soon became a sensation in Europe, America, and South America. Gottschalk has been called “America’s first … Read more
On October 13 we unveiled “The Angel of Music,” a bronze sculpture, at the grave of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (, America’s first international musical superstar. The blog post about that event, “Welcome, Angel of Music,” is here. Last week, on NPR’s “On Point,” Tom Ashbrook devoted his show to Gottschalk. His guests were Richard Rosenberg, … Read more
This past Saturday, the “Angel of Music,” a great bronze angel sculpture in tribute to music giant Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869), who is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, was unveiled at his grave. Gottschalk was America’s first matinee idol and its first international music superstar. While conducting an orchestra near Rio de Janiero in his own … Read more
Since soon after Green-Wood Cemetery’s founding in 1838, it has been a great sculpture garden. If you lived in mid-19th-century New York City or Brooklyn, and you wanted to see sculpture, you came to Green-Wood. There was virtually no other public sculpture at that time. The Metropolitan and Brooklyn Museums did not yet exist. No … Read more
It has been a mystery we’ve been trying to solve for some time now. We knew that the grave of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, America’s first internationally-acclaimed classical composer and pianist, had been adorned, soon after his death, with a marble angel. We had photographs of it–from the 19th century, even from as late as 1930 … Read more
Louis Moreau Gottschalk, America’s first matinee idol and its first internationally acclaimed classical composer/musician, is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery. Here’s Cecile Licad, in 2003, playing Gottschalk’s Manchega. Quite a performance, and on a Steinway piano (the Steinway family owns the largest tomb at Green-Wood, with room for 256 interments: 128 on the ground floor and … Read more