that the best way to begin the
musical education was by having the pupil learn to play the violin. When
she heard a songstress extolled for rapid vocalization she would ask:
"Can she sing six plain notes?" This question might afford young singers
food for reflection. Madame Mara passed her declining years teaching
singing near her native place, and died at Reval, in 1833. Two years
earlier, on her eighty-third birthday, Goethe offered her a poetic
tribute.

At a London farewell concert given by Madame Mara in 1802, she was
assisted by Mrs. Elizabeth Billington, who has been ranked first among
English-born queens of song. Her pure soprano had a range of three
octaves, from A to A, with flute-like upper tones. She sang with
neatness, agility and precision, could detect the least false intonation
of instrument or voice, and was attractive in appearance. Haydn
eulogized her genius in his diary, and in the studio of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, who was painting her portrait as St. Cecilia, exclaimed: "You
have represented Mrs. Billington listening to the angels, you should
have made them listening to her." It was she who introduced Mozart's
operas into England. She only lived to be forty-eight, breaking down in
1818, from the effects of brutal treatment of her second husband, a
Frenchman, named Felissent.

Last of the eighteenth century queens of song was Angelica Catalani,
born some forty miles from Rome in 1779, destined by her father, a
local magistrate, for the cloister, and borne beyond its walls by her
magnificent voice, with its compass of three octaves, from G to G. She
is described as a tall, fair woman with a splendid presence, large blue
eyes, features of perfect symmetry and a winning smile. So great was her
natural facility she could rise with ease from the faintest sound to the
most superb crescendo, could send her tones sweeping through the air
with the most delicious undulations, imitating the swell and fall of a
bell, and could trill like a bird on each note of a chromatic passage.
She dazzled her listeners, but left the heart untouched.

Her domestic life was a happy one, and her husband, Captain de
Vallebregue, adored her, although he knew so little about music that
once when she complained that the piano was too high he had six inches
cut off its legs. Surrounded by adulation at home and abroad, her
self-conceit became inordinate, tempting her to the most absurd feats of
skill. Her excessive love of display a