In 1824 Mme. Catalani again filled an engagement in England, making her reappearance in Mayer’s comic pasticcio, “Il Fanatico per la Mu-sica,” the airs of which had been expressly selected for the display of her vocal tours de force.  Crowded audiences again welcomed her whom absence had made an idol dearer than ever, and her transcendent power as a singer seemed to have rise even beyond the old pitch in her electrical bravura style of execution.  Yet some critics thought they detected tokens of the destroying hand of time.  One critic spoke of the “fragrance” of her tone as having evaporated.  Another compared her voice to a pianoforte the hammers of which had grown hard by use.  In her appearance she had become even more beautiful than ever, with some slight accession of embonpoint, and was conceded to be the handsomest woman in Europe.  For a while her popularity was unbounded among all classes, and probably no singer that ever lived rode on a higher wave of public adoration.  But the critics began to be very much dissatisfied with the vicious uses to which she put her magnificent voice.  In Paris the wags had called her l’instrument Catalani.  In London they said her style had become a caricature of its former grandeur, so exaggerated and affected had it grown.

“When she begins one of the interminable roulades up the scale,” says a writer in “Knight’s Quarterly Magazine,” “she gradually raises her body, which she had before stooped to almost a level with the ground, until, having won her way with a quivering lip and chattering chin to the very topmost note, she tosses back her head and all its nodding feathers with an air of triumph; then suddenly falls to a note two octaves and a half lower with incredible aplomb, and smiles like a victorious Amazon over a conquered enemy.”  A throng of flatterers joined in encouraging her in all her defects.  “No sooner does Catalani quit the orchestra,” says the same writer, “than she is beset by a host of foreign sycophants, who load her with exaggerated praise.  I was present at a scene of this kind in the refreshment-room at Bath, and heard reiterated on all sides, ’Ah! madame, la derniere fois toujours la meilleure!’ Thus is poor Mme. Catalani led to strive to excel herself every time she sings, until she exposes herself to the ridicule most probably of those very flatterers; for I have heard that on the Continent she is mimicked by a man dressed in female attire, who represents, by extravagant terms and gestures, Mme. Catalani surpassing herself.”  Occasionally, however, she showed that her genius had not forsaken her.  Her singing of Luther’s Hymn is thus described by an appreciative listener:  “She admits in this grandly simple composition no ornament whatever but a pure shake at the conclusion.  The majesty of her sustained tones, so rich, so ample as not only to fill but overflow the cathedral where I heard her, the solemnity of her manner, and the