Content:
A manuscript containing a fairly neat draft of what is likely a piece of journalism that was never published. The piece deals with Italian opera singers in New York, a subject about which Whitman had already written in an article entitled "The Opera," which appeared in
Life Illustrated
on November 10, 1855. As Edward Grier notes, the date of this manuscript is either late 1858 or 1859, as Marietta Piccolomini (a singer mentioned in the piece as being "the present 'rage'") only appeared in America during that opera season (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984] 1:396).
