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MADAME PASTA. 



THE arrival among us of one of the most gifted mistresses of song that ever 

 crossed the Alps from sunny Italy is a season of pleasure and gratulation. 

 We hail the advent of Madame Pasta as the return of an old, valued, and 

 long-lost friend, whose name recalls to memory many of the most delightful 

 and pleasurable moments of our existence ; and in seizing the opportunity 

 that now so kindly offers itself, of paying our tribute of admiration to her 

 lofty endowments, we feel assured that we shall at once do an act of justice 

 to that lady and awaken the pleasing recollections of our musical readers. 

 The engraver deserves our best thanks for the excellent manner in which he 

 has acquitted himself of his part of the work : of the way in which our 

 humble task shall have been performed, the reader will judge from the follow- 

 ing remarks, which profess only to be reminiscences of Pasta as the prima 

 donna of the London opera. 



Madame Pasta made her first appearance, when about twenty, in the Ja- 

 nuary of 1817, when she played Telemaco to the Penelope of Camporese in 

 Cimarosa's opera of that name : she personated the page in Mozart's "Nozze 

 di Figaro," and other similar characters during the same season. We cannot 

 ascertain, however, from the testimony of those who were conversant with 

 the opera of twenty years ago, that her talents at that time gave promise of her 

 subsequent greatness. 



Immediately on her return to the Continent in the autumn of 1817, Ma- 

 dame Pasta devoted herself with unceasing diligence to the study of music 

 and to the cultivation of her voice. Supported by the strong consciousness 

 of her capability and by the determination not to be baffled in her pursuit of 

 glory, she neglected nothing that could make her a great singer and a great 

 actress : her success, therefore, was certain. Her musical education being, 

 at length, completed, she re-appeared on the boards of the Academie at Paris 

 in the season of 1821; and a rich harvest of wealth and honour speedily 

 rewarded her for all the toil and anxiety of cultivation. Surprising as it may 

 appear, that the people who could admire the artificial and exaggerated style 

 of acting adopted by Talma and Mademoiselle Georges, could so far forget 

 their prejudices as to applaud the naivete and apparent artlessness that are 

 the great characteristics of Pasta's acting, it is no less true, that they received 

 her with delight and enthusiasm : she soon became the absorbing theme of 

 conversation in the salons, and the object of an admiration almost amounting 

 to idolatry. 



Madame Pasta's high renown in Paris augured well for her reception by a 

 London audience ; and when at length in April, 1824, she revisited our opera- 

 house, she claimed as a right the respect due to her now unquestioned genius 

 and attainments. Her first appearance in the Desdemona of Rossini's 



Otello" was an era of triumph as great as any that had ever been known in 

 this country ; and the most rigid critics of the music and drama were com- 

 pelled to acknowledge, that the enthusiastic reports of her talents were not 

 over-coloured nor exaggerated. Her acting was such as at once placed her 

 in the same rank with Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neill, while her vocal 

 powers were so great that she could utter 



" sounds that might create a soul 

 Under the ribs of death." 



Pasta's personation of Desdemona is so well-known to all who visit the opera, 

 that it would be almost an impertinence to give any detailed account of it. 

 The most generally admired parts are the scena commencing with " Desdemona 

 infelice" and concluding with the exquisite cavatina " Oh quante lagrime," 

 the impassioned air " Che smania! aime, die affanno" with its never-to-be-for- 

 gotten " dying, dying fall" at the close (in which Pasta never had an equal), 

 the plaintive, melancholy air " Assisa a pie d'un salice," and her prayer on 

 retiring to rest " Del calma, O del, nel sonno." Indeed her whole treatment 

 of the last act was such as to place the character in a situation far more con- 



