•
January 2 – The
Royal Danish Academy of Music opens in Copenhagen under the direction of
Niels Gade. •
February 15 – First performance of
Johann Strauss II's
waltz "
The Blue Danube" (, composed 1866) at a concert of the
Vienna Men's Choral Association (Wiener Männergesang-Verein). Strauss adapts it into its popular purely orchestral version for the
International Exposition in
Paris later this year. •
April 4 Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by
Saint-Saens is given its first performance at the
Champs-Élysées, with
Pablo de Sarasate playing the solo part and the composer conducting. •
April 22 – The
Hyers Sisters make their professional debut at Sacramento's Metropolitan Theater. •
April 27 –
Charles Gounod's opera
Roméo et Juliette premiers in
Théâtre Lyrique, Paris •
May 11 – The first
comic opera with a score by
Arthur Sullivan to be publicly performed, the one-act
Cox and Box with libretto by
F. C. Burnand, opens at the
Adelphi Theatre in London and runs for 300 performances. It is followed by the two-act
The Contrabandista, or The Law of the Ladrones by the same partnership which opens on
December 18 at
St. George's Hall, London. •
June 11 – Soprano
Nina Grieg marries her cousin, composer
Edvard Grieg, in Copenhagen. • September – Premiere of the opera (The Parliamentary Candidate) (music:
Spyridon Xyndas, libretto: Ioannis Rinopoulos), the first full-scale opera in Greek. •
October -
Richard Wagner completes
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. •
December 1 –
Johann von Herbeck conducts the first three movements of
Brahms'
A German Requiem in Vienna. •
Copyright restrictions in the new
North German Confederation are lifted for composers dead for more than 30 years, leading to the introduction of popular editions of scores by
Leipzig publishers
Breitkopf & Härtel and
Edition Peters. • "
The Maple Leaf Forever" is written in Canada by
Alexander Muir. ==Published popular music==