When she made her engagement for the second season, M. Vallebrogue demanded such exorbitant terms that the manager tore his hair with vexation, saying that such a salary to one singer would actually disable him from employing any other artists of talent.  “Talent!” repeated the husband; “have you not Mme. Cata-lani?  What would you have?  If you want an opera company, my wife with four or five puppets is quite sufficient.”  So, during the season of 1808, Catalani actually was the whole company, the other performers being literally puppets.  She appeared chiefly in operas composed expressly for her, in which the part for the prima donna was carefully adapted to the display of her various powers.  In “Semiramide” particularly she made an extraordinary impression, as it afforded room for the finest tragic action; and the music, trivial as it was, gave full scope for the extraordinary perfection of her voice.  She also appeared in comic operas, and in Paesiello’s “La Frascatana” particularly delighted the public by the graceful lightness and gayety of her comedy.  But in them as in tragedies she stood alone and furnished the sole attraction.  Her astonishing dexterity seemed rather the result of the natural aptitude of genius than of study and labor, and her most brilliant ornaments more the fanciful improvisations of the moment than the roulades of the composer.  Of her elocution in singing it is said:  “She was articulate, forcible, and powerful; occasionally light, pleasing, and playful, but never awfully grand or tenderly touching to the degree that the art may be carried.”  Her marvelous strains seemed to distant auditors poured forth with the fluent ease of a bird; but those who were near saw that her efforts were so great as to “call into full and violent action the muscular powers of the head, throat, and chest.”  In the execution of rapid passages the under jaw was in a continual state of agitation, “in a manner, too, generally thought incompatible with the production of pure tone from the chest, and inconsistent with a legitimate execution.  This extreme motion was also visible during the shake, which Catalani used sparingly, however, and with little effect.”

In spite of the reputation for rapacity which the avarice and arrogance of her husband helped to create, Catalani won golden opinions by her sweet temper, liberality, and benevolence.  Her purse-strings were always opened to relieve want or encourage struggling merit.  Her gayety and light-heartedness were proverbial.  It is recorded that at Bangor once she heard for the first time the strains of a Welsh harp, the player being a poor blind itinerant.  The music sounding in the kitchen of the inn filled the world-renowned singer with an almost infantile glee, and, rushing in among the pots and pans, she danced as madly as if she had been bitten by the tarantula, till, all panting and breathless, she threw the harper two guineas, and said she had never heard anything