was the occasion of keen controversy among the critics of the time.  Entirely averse to the conventional method of idealizing the character of the country girl out of all semblance to nature, Malibran was essentially realistic in preserving the rusticity, awkwardness, and naivete of peasant-life.  One critic argued:  “It is by no means rare to discover in the humblest walk of life an inborn grace and delicacy of Nature’s own implanting; and such assuredly is the model from which characters like Ninetta and Zerlina ought to be copied.”  But there were others who saw in the vigor, breadth, and verisimilitude of Mme. Malibran’s stage portraits of the peasant wench the truest and finest dramatic justice.  A great singer of our own age, Mme. Pauline Lucca, seems to have modeled her performances of the operatic rustic after the same method.  In such characters as __Susanna in the “Nozze di Figaro,” and Fidalma in Cimarosa’s “Il Matrimonio Segreto,” her talent for lyric comedy impressed the cognoscenti of London with irresistible power.  She was fascinated by the ludicrous, and was wont to say that she was anxious to play the Duenna in “Il Barbiere” for the sake of the grotesque costume.  In playing Fidalma the drollery of her tone and manner, the richness and originality of her comic humor, were incomparable.  Her daring, however, prompted her to do strange things, which would have been condemned in any other singer.  For example, while Fidalma is in the midst of the most ludicrous drollery of the part, Malibran suddenly took up one word and gave an extended series of the most brilliant and difficult roulades of her own improvisation, through the whole range of her voice.  Her hearers were transported at this musical feat, but it entirely interrupted the continuity of the humor.

On Mme. Malibran’s return to Paris, she found her father, who had unexpectedly returned from his Mexican tour, thoroughly bankrupted in purse, and more embittered than ever by his train of misfortunes.  He announced his intention of giving some representations at the Theatre Italien.  This resolution caused much vexation to his daughter, but she did not oppose it.  Garcia had lost a part of his voice; his tenor had become a barytone, and he could no longer reach the notes which had in former times been written for him.  She knew how much her father’s voice had become injured, and knowing equally well his intrepid courage, feared, not without reason, that he would tarnish his brilliant reputation.  Garcia displayed even more than ever the great artist.  A hoarseness seized him at the moment of appearing on the stage.  “This is nothing,” said he:  “I shall do very well”; and, by sheer strength of talent and of will, he arranged the music of his part (Almaviva) to suit the condition of his voice, changing the passages, transposing them an octave lower, and taking up notes adroitly where he found his voice available; and all this instantly, with an admirable confidence.