Amalie and an older brother found means to go to Vienna where a music teacher tried her voice, and though he saw great promise in it he declined to undertake her musical education on such terms as she could offer. Sadly disappointed, Amalie joined her mother and another brother at St. Peter in Upper Styria, and lived there for the three following years, when the family migrated to Gratz. It is related that Suppe, the composer, sometimes spent his summer holiday at Gratz with some old friends. Every evening the party would gather in the garden to play skittles. When ready to begin they would call to the woman next door to send the "lad" to set up the skittles. The "lad" was a sprightly, black-eyed girl named "Maly" Materna. One day Suppe happened to hear her sing, and struck by the beauty of her voice, called the attention of Kapellmeister Zaitz, also a visitor at Gratz. Soon after this "Maly" became a member of the chorus at the Landes theatre, and by Suppe's advice Treumann engaged her for Vienna. She had meanwhile developed her voice. Materna's first salary was forty gulden a month, but her first appearance was so successful that this was raised to one hundred gulden. For two years she sang in Offenbachian roles, and it was at the termination of her second season that she became engaged at the Karl Theatre in Vienna, at a yearly salary of five thousand gulden, with an extra honorarium of five gulden for each performance. While appearing nightly in the light works of the French and German composers of the time, Fraulein Materna studied diligently during the day at the more exacting roles of heavy opera with Professor Proch, and in 1868 sang, in the presence of Hoffkapellmeister Esser, Donna Elvira's grand air from "Don Giovanni." Esser was delighted with her, and insisted that Hofrath Dingelstedt should give the young singer a hearing, and the result was that she was engaged for the Imperial Opera House. Shortly after her engagement at the theatre in Gratz she married an actor named Friedrich, who was engaged with her when she went to the Karl Theatre, Vienna. In 1869 she made her debut at the Imperial Opera House in the role of Selika, in the "Africaine," in which part she was able to demonstrate her capabilities, for she won a signal success, and was at once placed in a high position among opera singers of the German school.