Among the company that she had assembled Mme. Catalani alone could be called a singer; she made a practice, however, of singing below a mezza voce during an entire evening, acting wretchedly into the bargain, until, near the close of the performance, she enchanted everyone with a bravura aria, generally one written especially for her. Yet two or three of these show pieces were thought sufficient for a whole season, and no one of them filled more than ten minutes of the three dull hours through which these miserable operas dragged. And as a rule these arias or bravura pieces were quite ordinary productions. As an excep­tion I am obliged to mention Rode's variations. To be sure, the genre was distasteful to cultivated musicians, for instruments ought to imitate and accompany the voice, not vice versa, yet the extraordinary dexterity with which Catalani performed these baroque tricks took her audience by storm. << less