Wallace, (William) Vincent (1812–65), composer of operas, piano music, and songs, was born 11 March 1812 in Waterford city, son of Spencer (‘William’) Wallace, fifer in the North Mayo Militia, born in Ballina, Co. Mayo, in 1789, who had a long career in the British army (1804–26), finishing as a sergeant/bandmaster of the 29th Regiment of Foot (from 1823). There were three subsequent children: a son, Wellington (b. c.1813–15), and two daughters, Susannah (b. 1818) and Eliza (b. 1819), both born in Ballina. Nothing is known of the composer's mother, Elizabeth.
The family very likely followed the regiment, settling with it in Ballina in 1816. Wallace's early education occurred there, his father acting as his music teacher. Susannah probably died young, but Eliza, who married the Australian singer John Bushelle, had a career as a soprano, and Wellington was a flautist. William showed the greatest musical aptitude, however, excelling on violin and piano. In 1825 the boys enlisted alongside their father, returning to Waterford with the 29th Foot. In 1826, when the regiment was posted to Mauritius, Spencer bought their discharges and the family moved to Dublin.
Spencer, and perhaps the sons too, found employment in the pit of the Adelphi (later the Queen's) Theatre. About 1828, William joined the orchestra of the new Theatre Royal, the home of opera in Dublin for most of the century, as a violinist. He quickly rose to sub-leader, and was frequently commended for his playing. Wallace appeared as a supporting act to Paganini at the Dublin music festival of 1831, and was inspired to emulate him, composing a violin concerto and performing it in Dublin in 1834. Wallace had earlier fallen in love with one of his violin pupils, Isabella Kelly (c.1813–1900) of Frascati, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, and they eloped about 1831. Isabella was Roman Catholic, and Wallace (a protestant) converted, possibly to placate his rich father-in-law. He probably adopted the name ‘Vincent’ at his confirmation, and certainly used it as his principal name thereafter.
In 1835 Wallace, Isabella, and their son William Vincent (‘Willy’) (b. c.1833) emigrated to Australia. Embarking from Liverpool in July, they arrived first in Hobart at the end of October, moving on to Parramatta, near Sydney, in January 1836. Wallace was involved in concert-giving in Sydney, and also – with the help of his father and sister Eliza, recently arrived from Ireland – established a music academy for young ladies there. Later in 1836 Wallace attempted farming, in partnership with an Englishman, on a holding near Windsor (Hawkesbury district). When this enterprise failed, Isabella, homesick and distressed by news of death and illness in her family, sailed for home with their son. Wallace continued his concert-giving in Sydney during 1837, and became involved in a business to import pianos. He left Sydney finally in February 1838, crossing the Pacific to Valparaiso in Chile. He traversed South America, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the southern USA in succeeding years, arriving in New York in 1843. He was feted there as a virtuoso on violin and piano, and was involved in the early concert seasons of the Philharmonic Society, of which he later became a life member.
Wallace moved to London in 1845, and settled into musical life there. Emulating the recent successes of his compatriot Michael William Balfe (qv) in English opera, he wrote Maritana to a feeble libretto by Edward Fitzball. The work, which is exuberant and very melodious, was a sensation at Drury Lane during the 1845–6 season, a popularity that was maintained, following numerous performances abroad, for nigh on a century. Maritana is notable for being among the first operas in a Spanish idiom, and may well have influenced Massenet and Bizet. Wallace met Berlioz, a kindred spirit who remained a lifelong friend, in London during 1847–8. Subsequently, Wallace could never quite match his initial operatic triumph: Matilda (1847) had only a critical success, and Lurline (begun in 1847), which might have secured his reputation, had to wait until 1860 for its première at Covent Garden. The delay was due partly to financial difficulties in the London theatres, but also to recurring personal ill-health, caused possibly by a tropical disease (such as Chagas' disease) contracted in South America.
In 1849 Wallace returned to the Americas, first visiting Brazil, and then resettling in New York, where he lived with pianist Hélène Stoepel (c.1827–1885) and worked as pianist, conductor, and salon composer. The pair gave concerts together as husband and wife, leading many to assume they were married. Wallace became a US citizen in 1854, but perhaps because of failed business ventures and/or a developing heart condition, the couple, with their two sons Clarence S. and Vincent, returned in about 1856 to London, where Wallace eked out a living. Eventually he was enabled to produce Lurline (1860), but still remained financially insecure despite its undoubted success. The failure with the public of his next and perhaps most accomplished opera, The amber witch (1861), notwithstanding the involvement of distinguished singers and the conductor Charles Hallé, was, however, the final blow to his operatic ambitions.
Nevertheless, Wallace managed to complete two lighter operas in his remaining years: the French-style Love's triumph (1862) and the colourful The desert flower (1863), set in Dutch Guyana. He was working on yet another (‘Estrella’) when his heart condition worsened in 1864; he went to Paris for treatment and spent a lengthy convalescence there. Finally, Hélène moved him (September 1865) to the south of France, where he died (12 October) at the Château de Bagen (the home of her sister, the baroness de Saintegême), near Barbazan, Sauveterre de Comminges, Haute Garonne. Later that month his embalmed remains were returned to London and interred in Kensal Green cemetery.
Wallace's incomplete or lost operas and operettas included ‘Estrella’, ‘Gulnare’, ‘The king's page’, ‘The maid of Lyons’, ‘The maid of Zurich’, and ‘Olga’. His completed operas, all published in vocal score originally in London, are in the BL, together with a large collection of printed piano music and songs, and a few choral numbers. Autograph full scores survive of Maritana (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna), Lurline (Bibliothèque de Conservatoire Royal, Brussels), and Love's triumph (overture wanting) (BL). Two letters to publisher C. R. Wessel (1846) and music critic J. W. Davison (1848) are in BL, Add. MS 70924, ff 168–72; two letters to his son Willy (1847) and sister-in-law Anna Kelly (Mrs James Jones) (1859) are reproduced in Myers's thesis, pp 578–88. A photograph of Wallace (n.d.) is in BL, Add. MS 36747, f. 75. A fine watercolour portrait of Wallace as a young man, by J. Hanshew, is in the NGI. Two portraits by unknown artists exist, both dated 1865: a lithograph for a supplement to the Orchestra (BL), and a woodcut for the Illustrated London News (National Portrait Gallery, London).
Wallace's reputation was adversely affected by the success of Maritana, which has eclipsed the far greater achievements of his later operas. Had London theatre conditions been more favourable, Wallace, along with other contemporary mid-Victorian composers, might have succeeded in establishing a distinctively English operatic tradition. In the event, only the later light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were to define English opera in the nineteenth century, and the earlier serious opera school was largely forgotten.