By increasing the salary of her
more tractable rival they finally disposed of Cuzzoni, who thenceforth
through her exaggerated demands, managed to disgust her patrons wherever
she appeared. Her reckless extravagance left her wholly destitute after
losing her voice and her husband, Signor Sandoni, a harpsichord-maker.
She passed her last years in Bologna, subsisting on a miserable pittance
earned by covering buttons.

Faustina married Adolphe Hasse, the German dramatic composer, and at
forty-seven sang before Frederick the Great, who was charmed with the
freshness of her voice. The couple lived until 1783, the one
eighty-three, the other eighty-four years of age. Dr. Burney visited
them when they were advanced in the seventies and found Faustina a
sprightly, sensible old lady, with a delightful store of reminiscences,
and her husband a communicative, rational old gentleman, quite free from
"pedantry, pride and prejudice."

Gertrude Elizabeth Mara, Germany's earliest noted queen of song, began
her public career in 1755 as a child violinist of six, traveling with
her father, Johann Schmaeling, a respectable musician of Hesse-Cassel. In
London her musical gifts proved to include a phenomenal soprano voice,
which developed a compass from G to E altissimo, unrivalled portamento
di voce, pure enunciation and precise intonation. She became skilled in
harmony, theory, sight-reading and harpsichord playing. When she sang,
her glowing countenance, her supreme acting and the lights and shades of
her voice made people forget the plainness of her features and the
insignificance of her form and stature. Her rendering of Handel's airs,
especially "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth," was pronounced faultless.

Frederick the Great, who as soon expected pleasure from the neighing of
a horse as from a German songstress, vanquished on hearing her,
retained her as court singer. While in his service she became the wife
of Jean Mara, a handsome, dissipated court violoncellist, whom she loved
devotedly, but who led her a sorry life. Returning to London later she
taught singing at two guineas a lesson. Upon fear being expressed that
her price, double that of other teachers, would limit her class, she
said her pupils having her voice as a model could learn in half the time
required for those who had only the tinkling of a piano to imitate.
Though she believed singing should be taught by a singer, a tenderness
for her own experience made her insist