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Events
- April 16 – Giacomo Meyerbeer's grand opera Le prophète is premièred (after a decade in preparation) by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier with Pauline Viardot (who has collaborated extensively in the production) in the mezzo-soprano role, her first with the Opera. Stage effects include electric light, ballet on roller skates and the use of saxhorns. The audience includes Napoleon III (new Emperor of France), Berlioz, the terminally ill Chopin, and Turgenev. Its world tour begins on July 24 in London.
- May 3–9 – Richard Wagner is an active participant in the May Uprising in Dresden, suppressed by the Kingdom of Saxony, and is forced to flee to Zürich.
- September 22 – Johann Strauss I fails to turn up to a banquet in honour of Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz, where he is expected to perform a new work. His absence is explained by the fact that he had contracted scarlet fever from one of his illegitimate children while working on the new composition; he dies a few days later in Vienna aged 45.
- October 30 – Funeral of Frédéric Chopin (who has died aged 39, probably of pericarditis aggravated by tuberculosis) at La Madeleine, Paris,
- October 17 – Frédéric Chopin, pianist and composer (b. 1810)
- December 14 – Conradin Kreutzer, conductor and composer (b. 1780)
- December 29 – Dionisio Aguado, guitarist and composer (b. 1784)
- Unknown day – Júlia Gusztinyi, soprano
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