world forgive the presence of other
deficiencies which could not thus be glorified by the presence of
genius, thought, and truth--as one who engraved deeper impressions
on the memory of her hearers than any other even in an age of great
singers--Mme. Pasta must be placed in the very front rank of art.
The way by which this gifted woman arrived at her throne was long and
toilsome. Nature had denied her the ninety-nine requisites of the
singer (according to the old Italian adage). Her voice at the origin was
limited, husky, and weak, without charm, without flexibility. Though her
countenance _spoke_, its features were cast in a coarse mold. Her figure
was ungraceful, her movements were awkward. No candidate for musical
sovereignty ever presented herself with what must have appeared a more
meager catalogue of pretensions at the outset of her career. What she
became let our sketch reveal.

She was the daughter of a Jewish family named Negri, born at Saronno,
near Milan, in the year 1798. The records of her childhood are slight,
and beyond the fact that she received her first musical lessons at the
Cathedral of Como and her latter training at the Milan Conservatory,
and that she essayed her feeble wings at second-rate Italian theatres
in subordinate parts for the first year, there is but little of
significance to relate. In 1816 she sang in the train of the haughty
and peerless Catalani at the Favart in Paris, but did not succeed
in attracting attention. But it happened that Ayrton, of the King's
Theatre, London, heard her sing at the house of Paer, the composer,
and liked her well enough to engage herself and husband at a moderate
salary. When Pasta's glimmering little light first shone in London,
Fodor and Camporese were in the full blaze of their reputation--both
brilliant singers, but destined to pale into insignificance afterward
before the intense splendor of Pasta's perfected genius. One of the
notices of the opening performance at the King's Theatre, when Mme.
Camporese sang the leading _role_ of Cimarosa's "Penelope," followed up
a lavish eulogium on the prima donna with the contemptuous remark, "Two
subordinate singers named Pasta and Mari came forward in the characters
of _Telamuco_ and _Arsi-noe_, but their musical talent does not require
minute delineation." There is every reason to believe that Pasta was
openly flouted both by the critics and the members of her own profession
during her first London experience