tic energy. She sang
in the same company with Grisi, Persiani, and Viardot, while Mario and
Tamburini added their magnificent voices to this fine constellation of
lyric stars. When she returned to London in 1849, Jenny Lind had retired
from the stage where she had so thoroughly bewitched the public, and
Mlle. Alboni became the leading attraction of Her Majesty's Theatre,
thus arraying herself against the opera organization with which she had
been previously identified. Among the other members of the company were
Lablache and Ronconi. Mlle. Alboni seemed to be stung by a feverish
ambition at this time to depart from her own musical genre, and shine in
such parts as _Rosina, Ninetta, Zerlina_ ("Don Giovanni ") and _Norina_
("Don Pasquale"). The general public applauded her as vehemently as
ever, but the judicious grieved that the greatest of contraltos should
forsake a realm in which she blazed with such undivided luster.

It is difficult to fancy why Alboni should have ventured on so dangerous
an experiment. It may be that she feared the public would tire of her
luscious voice, unperturbed as it was by the resistless passion and
sentiment which in such singers as Malibran, Pasta, and Viardot, had
overcome all defects of voice, and given an infinite freshness and
variety to their tones. It may be that the higher value of a soprano
voice in the music market stirred a feeling in Alboni which had been
singularly lacking to her earlier career. Whatever the reason might have
been, it is a notorious fact that Mlle. Alboni deliberately forced the
register upward, and in doing so injured the texture of her voice,
and lost something both of luscious tone and power. In later years she
repented this artistic sin, and recovered the matchless tones of her
youth in great measure, but, as long as she persevered in her ambition
to be a _soprano_, the result was felt by her most judicious friends to
be an unfortunate one.

A pleasant incident, illustrating Alboni's kindness of heart, occurred
on the eve of her departure for Italy, whither she was called by family
reasons. Her leave-taking was so abrupt that she had almost forgotten
her promise to sing in Paris on a certain date for the annual benefit of
Filippo Galli, a superannuated musician. The suspense and anxiety of the
unfortunate Filippo were to be more easily imagined than described when,
asked if Alboni would sing, he could not answer definitively--"Perhaps
yes, perhaps no." He