[My] friend, the Rev. Palmer Johnson, Aston, Derbyshire, chairman of the county festival, engaged her [Madame Catalani] for that occasion at three hundred guineas. The evening she arrived I heard her sing two or three ballads, accompanied by her clever daughter. She sang sotto voce, and I was so pleased that I complimented her by saying she sang as well as she did twenty years ago. On the following morning how miserably was I disappointed! the first note she gave was coarse and out of tune. I waited with anxiety, thinking she would improve as she went on; but no! the freshness, the delicacy of her youth was gone. That which charmed us before was spontaneous nature; now, everything she did could only be produced by severe exertion. << less