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Updated: June 10, 2025
She was admitted by the decent woman whose one eye was of a china blue, and she waited for Giuditta in the same small sitting-room, of which the one heavily curtained window looked out upon an inner court.
A queen of song who profoundly impressed her age was Giuditta Pasta, born near Milan in 1798, of Hebrew parentage. For her Bellini wrote "La Sonnambula" and "Norma," Donizetti his "Anna Bolena," Pacini his "Niobe," and she was the star of Rossini's leading operas of the time.
Giuditta was for a good while regarded as a prodigy by her friends, and acquired an excellent rank on the concert and operatic stage, but she was so far outshone by her more gifted sister, that her name is now only one of the traditions of that throng of talented and hard-working artists who have contributed much to the stability of the lyric stage, without adding to it any resplendent luster.
Giuditta, dainty, blue-eyed, a girl still and three years a widow, flits homeward through a spring landscape of grey and green and the smile of a milky sky, being herself the dominant of the chord, with her bough of slipt olive and her jagged scimitar, with her pretty blue fal-lals smocked and puffed, and her yellow curls floating over her shoulders.
Thence probably she and her sister Giuditta, ten years her elder, inherited their gift of song.
The phrase sounded as though it had been carefully studied and often repeated, but the dramatic tone in which it was uttered produced a certain reassuring effect upon Bosio, in his half-frightened state. "Do you wish to tell whether they will really kill Veronica?" inquired Giuditta. "If you have any question to ask, you must put it quickly. I cannot keep the spirits waiting.
It would be natural enough, amongst such people, as Bosio knew, but he wondered how many more of the same family lived in the rooms beyond the one in which he had received spirit-communications, and whether Giuditta Astarita supported them all by her extraordinary talents. He descended the damp stone stairs and passed out into the street again, dazed and disturbed in mind.
She had her purse in her hand, and stood still a moment, hesitating. "I generally ask twenty-five francs for a consultation," said Giuditta. "But I am so much obliged to you for coming to free me from this obsession, that I shall not charge anything to-day." "No," answered Matilde, quietly. "I am not accustomed to receiving anything without paying for it. But I thank you."
He had come quite unexpectedly and had not given his name, and the spirit, or whatever it might be, had instantly told him of Veronica, of her danger, of his brother and sister-in-law and of the will. Moreover, the friends who had spoken to him of Giuditta Astarita had told him similar tales within a few days. The spirit had said that the handsome woman would make him marry Veronica.
Theodore played a ritornello of the cut and pattern which occurs by the hundred in the opera buffas of the Italians, and then began to sing in sweet, tender strains "Lorenzo Coleoni! Gaspare Rossari! Oh Dio! Giuseppo Marelli! Francesco Sedini!" &c. Ottmar followed with "Giuditta Paracca! Teresa Ravini! Giovanna Velata Oh Dio!" &c.
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