Albert Niemann...For a few years he led a jovial, wandering life, readily obtaining short engagements (he would not accept long ones) at the minor opera houses of North Germany, at one of which it happened, when he was about four or five and twenty, that Von Huelsen, the General-Intendant of the Royal Theatres in Prussia, heard him sing, and shortly afterwards summoned him to Berlin, where the means of further instruction and improvement were generously placed at his disposal.