Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah has its premiere in England, in the city of Birmingham

Oh! Susannah is in the first published collection of popular songs by Stephen Collins Foster

In Vienna the younger Johann Strauss succeeds his father as the Waltz King

Jenny Lind, the 'Swedish Nightingale', has a great success touring the USA in a show presented by P.T. Barnum

Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto, based on a play by Victor Hugo, is a huge success at its premiere in Venice

Richard Wagner writes an anti-semitic tract, Jewishness in Music

Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore is a success at its premiere in Rome

Just six weeks after the success of Il Trovatore, Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata is a disaster at its premiere in Venice

Robert Schumann throws himself into the Rhine, in an attempt to commit suicide, and spends the last two years of his life in an asylum

Kneller Hall is bought by the War Department and reopened as the Military School of Music, later the Royal Military School of music.

Hector Berlioz completes his 4-hour opera The Trojans (not performed as a complete work until 1890)

The opera Faust, by French composer Charles Gounod, has its premiere in Paris

An official National Eisteddfod is held for the first time in Wales, in Aberdare

Richard Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde has its premiere in the Munich court theatre

Modest Mussorgsky composes his orchestral work St John's Night on the Bare Mountain, based on a story by Gogol

The first collection of 'Negro Spirituals' is published in book form in the US as Slave Songs of the United States

Richard Wagner's opera The Mastersingers of Nuremberg has its premiere in Munich

Johannes Brahms' German Requiem, setting passages from Luther's translation of the Bible, has its first complete performance in Leipzig

Das Rheingold, with its premiere in Munich, is the first part of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle to be staged

Coppélia, with choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon to music by Delibes, has its premiere at the Paris Opera

Richard Wagner marries Cosima, the daughter of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt

Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, is commissioned for the Cairo opera house, part of the process of Egypt becoming westernized

Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov has its premiere in St Petersburg

Johann Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus has its premiere in Vienna

Mussorgsky composes Pictures at an Exhibition as a piece for piano in memory of an exhibition by the Russian painter Victor Hartmann