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Updated: June 6, 2025
Malibran had established herself so firmly in the admiration of the Parisian world, she accepted an engagement for the summer months with La-porte of the King's Theatre in London. She made her début in the character of Desdemona, a part which had already been firmly fixed in the notions of the musical public by the two differing conceptions of Pasta and Sontag.
Alboni's achievement was gratifying to her pride, but it need not be said that her interpretation of Fides was radically different from that of Mme. Viardot, which was a grand tragic conception, akin to those created by the genius of Pasta and Schröder-Devrient.
The following year the management of the King's Theatre again endeavored to secure Pasta, who had returned to Paris. Before she would finally consent she stipulated that the new manager should pay her all the arrears of salary left unsettled by his predecessor, for, in spite of its artistic excellence, the late season had not proved a pecuniary success.
According to his report I lost much by not hearing the two rival nightingales, Sontag and Pasta, last night, but I care not for it. He gives me to understand I will be commanded for Sunday. Sir W.K. asked me to sit for him to Northcote, and to meet him there at one to-morrow. I cannot refuse this, but it is a great bore. Dined with Mrs.
Undismayed by the traditions of Mali-bran, Pasta, and Sontag in this character, she gave the part a new reading, in which she put something of her own intense individuality.
This took place with Horace; it put him in spirits, in train, and he fired away at Lady Castlefort, whom he had been flattering a loutrance five minutes before. "I so admire that acting of sacrifice in your belle cousine to-night! Pasta herself could not do it better. There is a look of 'Oh, ye just gods! what a victim am I! and with those upturned eyes so charming!
It was during this season that Pasta first sang with Malibran. Ronzi di Begnis had lost her voice, Caradori had seceded in a pet, and the manager in despair tried the trembling and inexperienced daughter of the great Spanish tenor to fill up the gap. She was a failure, as Pasta had been at first in England, but time was to bring her a glorious recompense, as it had done to her elder rival.
She is the first of the queens of song that I have seen ascend the throne of popular favor, in the course of sixty years, and pretty little Adelina Patti the last; I have heard all that have reigned between the two, and above them all Pasta appears to me pre-eminent for musical and dramatic genius alone and unapproached, the muse of tragic song.
But Señor Pasta had already formed his resolution, and it was not to mix at all in the affair, either as consulter or consulted.
Among the audience, however, was another gifted woman, who might far more legitimately have been shocked at the utter wreck of every musical means of expression in the singer who might have been more naturally forgiven, if some humour of self-glorification had made her severely just not worse to an old prima donna; I mean Madame Viardot. Then, and not till then, she was hearing Madame Pasta.
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