Eliza Eichelberger Ridgely Project

Really Spicy Opera co-administers the Eliza Eichelberger Ridgely Project with the Élan Ensemble. This historically informed publication and performance project is devoted to the life and music of Eliza Eichelberger Ridgely (1803-1867) of Hampton.

Thomas Sully’s Lady with a Harp (1818).

One of the most accomplished American women of the antebellum period, Eliza was a collector of rare music, a correspondent of the Marquis de Lafayette, successful businesswoman, and a pioneering horticulturalist. Her music collection, preserved at the Hampton National Historic Site in Towson, MD, gives insight into the musical practices and vocal technique at the Imperial Court of Napoleon I.

The Eliza Eichelberger Ridgely Project has presented music and scholarship at meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Early Americanists. Additional research will be presented at the 2019 Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Staff

Executive Director: Basil Considine

Artistic Director: Elissa Edwards

Research Assistant: Lauren Berlin

Research Assistant: Kaylie Falk

Research Assistant: Margaret Rowley

Dr.Basil Considine (left) at the Archives Nationales de France.

The Eliza Eichelberger Ridgely Project has been generously supported by grants from the American Musicological Society and The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and by the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.

Drama that burns and music that sates.