Note 346 — BOOK IX[283]

Maria Felicita Garcia, Dame Malibran, later Dame de Bériot (1808-1836), one of the most famous opera-singers of the time, was the daughter of Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia, the Spanish singer and composer. She made her first appearance in opera in London, on the 7th of June 1825, when she took the place of Madame Pasta, who was ill. She made a great sensation and was at once engaged for the rest of the season. In 1826, she went to New York and there, in the middle of a successful season, married Malibran, the French banker, who soon became bankrupt. She left him in 1827, returned to France and appeared for the first time in Paris, on the 12th of January 1828, in Sémiramide. Her success was prodigious and she continued to rouse unparalleled enthusiasm in all the great cities of Europe. On the 30th of March 1836, Madame Malibran married Charles Auguste de Bériot, the Belgian violinist; six months later, on the 23rd of September, she died, in Manchester, from the effects of a fall from her horse, in London, a few days earlier.—T.