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Updated: June 28, 2025
London heard it first from Chelard's German company at the King's Theatre on May 18, 1832. It was first given in English at Covent Garden on June 12, 1835, with Malibran as Leonore, and in Italian at Her Majesty's on May 20, 1851, when the dialogue was sung in recitative written by Balfe.
The Abbé Liszt, the most gifted of modern pianists, told a friend of mine, his pupil, that he had learned more of music from hearing Madame Malibran sing, than from anything else whatever. It is better not to base any plea for woman on the ground of her angelic superiority. The argument proves too much. If she is already so perfect, there is every inducement to let well alone.
The little song he was singing was his own; one he had composed, both air and words for the child was a genius. He went to the window, and looking out, he saw a man putting up a great bill with yellow letters announcing that Mme. Malibran would sing that night in public.
Besides those I have mentioned we had a numerous acquaintance who were neither learned nor scientific; and at concerts at some of their houses I enjoyed much hearing the great artists of the day, such as Pasta, Malibran, Grisi, Rubini, &c., &c. We knew Lucien Buonaparte, who gave me a copy of his poems, which were a failure.
On such a night the very spirit of Venice is abroad. We feel why she is called Bride of the Sea. Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi's 'Forza del Destino' at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked homeward through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the narrow calle which leads to the traghetto of the Salute.
This part was for years regarded as standing to her what Medea was to Pasta, Norma to Grisi, Fidelio to Malibran and Schröder-Devrient, and it was only when she herself made a loftier flight as Fides in "Le Prophète" that this special connection of the part with the artist ceased. Her genius always found a more ardent sympathy with the higher forms of music.
A charming compliment was paid by Malibran, who knew how to do such things with infinite taste and delicacy, to Persiani, when the latter lady was singing at Naples in 1835: while the representative of Lucia was changing her costume between the acts, a lady entered her dressing-room, and complimented her in warmest terms on the excellence of her singing.
There was in her glance and action the spasmodic inspiration observable in Malibran towards the close of her career. The process described so philosophically by Coleridge, to lose 'self in an idea dearer than self, is the condition of all greatness.
She lent an incomparable grandeur to tragic parts and to the severe dignity of the oratorio. I never had the pleasure of hearing Madame Malibran, but Rossini told me about her. He preferred her sister. Madame Malibran, he said, had the advantage of beauty. In addition, she died young and left a memory of an artist in full possession of all her powers.
Her sister, Marie Felicitas, at first wife of M. Malibran, and afterward married to the violinist De Beriot, was one of the world's greatest singers, and her career is too well known to need description. Her fame as a composer rests on a number of attractive romances and chansonettes, of which an extensive collection was published in Paris. Louise Pauline Marie Viardot, afterward Mme.
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