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Updated: June 12, 2025
Her singing of "Casta Diva" was by far the finest gem heard. Such richness and volume, such possession and depth and passion, such purity and firmness and ease, I did not believe possible. Although a single song in a concert it seemed to embrace the whole spirit of the opera.
I learned at that hour in any case what "acclamation" might mean, and have again before me the vast high-piled auditory thundering applause at the beautiful pink lady's clear bird-notes; a thrilling, a tremendous experience and my sole other memory of concert-going, at that age, save the impression of a strange huddled hour in some smaller public place, some very minor hall, under dim lamps and again in my mother's company, where we were so near the improvised platform that my nose was brushed by the petticoats of the distinguished amateur who sang "Casta Diva," a very fine fair woman with a great heaving of bosom and flirt of crinoline, and that the ringletted Italian gentleman in black velvet and a romantic voluminous cloak who represented, or rather who professionally and uncontrollably was, an Improvisatore, had for me the effect, as I crouched gaping, of quite bellowing down my throat.
The praise he bestows upon their chastity strikes me as being exceedingly exaggerated. In the first place, the great majority are in the position of the ugly woman described by Ovid, "Casta quam nemo rogavit." As for the pretty ones, they are, like all Spanish women, very fastidious in choosing their lovers. Their fancy must be taken, and their favour must be earned. Mr.
"Little flatterer!" kissing her and laughing, and the white hands busy again. "Papa, what will you have?" "A song, my dear." "Well, what do you like? Casta Diva?" "I'd be sorry to like it! can you sing the Lass o' Gowrie?" "I shall try, if you wish." She broke into singing as she spoke, and Grace's work dropped in her lap as she listened. What an exquisite voice it was!
She was evidently much agitated, but the orchestra commenced, and before she had sung a dozen notes of "Casta Diva," she began to recover her self-possession, and long before the scena was concluded she was as calm as if she was in her own drawing-room.
It was the full moon of NORMA that remarkable celestial phenomenon which rises so palpably to a hushed audience and a sublime andante chorus, until the CASTA DIVA is sung the "inconstant moon" that then and thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as though it were a part of the solar system inaugurated by Joshua.
One of the finest cities in Europe, wrote Forster in 1779; but the Berliners! The women in general were abandoned. An English diplomat, Sir John Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, had the same impression: Berlin was a town where, if fortis might be translated by “honourable,” you could say that there was not a vir fortis nec femina casta.
His first impression, after hearing her in Norma, was one of disappointment. It was in June, 1847. The great tenor thus records his impressions of the great prima donna: "She is well enough in Casta Diva that invocation to the moon suits her dreamy Teutonic nature but the fury of the loving woman, the deserted mother No, no! a thousand times no!"
In the south-east Australian province the principal Gasteropoda procured were Bulla brevis, at Port Jackson, in 6 fathoms; Cyprea oryza, at Port Phillip, in 5 fathoms; Calyptraea connata, in 6 fathoms, Port Jackson, with Nassa suturalis, and another, a new Terebra, Monotigma casta, Mitra sordida, a Marginella, a Columbella, and Struthiolaria oblita.
Firkin, "if you only wanted to see them, you know, and be able to say at home that you knew Madame la Marquise So-and-so, and Madame la Comtesse So-and-so, and describe their dresses, why, we can manage it well enough; for we are engaged to a little party at the opera this evening with the Countess de Papillon and Madame Casta Diva, two of the best known ladies in Paris. But they never visit."
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