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Check - 10/17/1874.... ASD by Max Strakosch $263 made out to & signed on the verso by the British Actress Adelaide Neilson (age 29 at the time).....New York Check w/Revenue Stamp, LINGUIST AND MUSICIAN. Mr. Max Strakosch, the famous operatic impresario, whose death is announced from New York, had long been ill. Some little time ago he was seized with a brain disease which incapacitated him for business. He was born in 1834, and was associated with his brother Maurice, who died in 1887, in the enterprise which led to the real operatic debut at New York in 1859 of Madame Patti, then a girl of 16. On Maurice's departure for Europe, Mr. Max Strakosch became manager, and he introduced to the United States Brignoli, the tenor (whom he subsequently brought to England), Mesdames Titiens, Christine Nilsson, Pauline Lucca, Parepa, Carlotta, Patti, Kellogg, Ilma di Murska, Albani, and Marie Boze, Signor Campanini, and other eminent artists. Mr. Max Strakosch was a great linguist, and is said to have been able to converse fluently in seven languages. By 1872 Adelaide Neilson ( (3 March 1848 – 15 August 1880) was hugely popular and, after making a successful tour of British cities and giving a series of farewell performances in London, she came to America, where her agent was Edwin F. De Nyse.[4] She made her first American appearance on 18 November 1872, at Booth's Theatre, New York City, as Juliet. She was praised by American critics who echoed the acclaim she had received from London theatrical audiences.[5] She made subsequent American tours throughout the 1870s. She played Amy Robsart, heroine of Sir Walter Scott, in May 1873. She is noted for a fine engagement staged in Brooklyn, New York the same year. Her farewell at Booth's Theatre came on 2 May 1874. Neilson accepted an engagement at the Lyceum in the autumn that year. She performed in Cymbeline by William Shakespeare at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York on 14 May 1877. She not only achieved distinction on the American stage, but accumulated a considerable fortune. The parts that she acted in America included Juliet, Rosalind, Viola, Beatrice, Imogen and Isabella, from Shakespeare and Amy Robsart, Julia, Pauline and Lady Teazle, from other authors.

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Arc.MS.56, Box 20, Folder 12