She was the daughter of a Jewish family named Negri, born at Saronno, near Milan, in the year 1798.  The records of her childhood are slight, and beyond the fact that she received her first musical lessons at the Cathedral of Como and her latter training at the Milan Conservatory, and that she essayed her feeble wings at second-rate Italian theatres in subordinate parts for the first year, there is but little of significance to relate.  In 1816 she sang in the train of the haughty and peerless Catalani at the Favart in Paris, but did not succeed in attracting attention.  But it happened that Ayrton, of the King’s Theatre, London, heard her sing at the house of Paer, the composer, and liked her well enough to engage herself and husband at a moderate salary.  When Pasta’s glimmering little light first shone in London, Fodor and Camporese were in the full blaze of their reputation—­both brilliant singers, but destined to pale into insignificance afterward before the intense splendor of Pasta’s perfected genius.  One of the notices of the opening performance at the King’s Theatre, when Mme. Camporese sang the leading role of Cimarosa’s “Penelope,” followed up a lavish eulogium on the prima donna with the contemptuous remark, “Two subordinate singers named Pasta and Mari came forward in the characters of Telamuco and Arsi-noe, but their musical talent does not require minute delineation.”  There is every reason to believe that Pasta was openly flouted both by the critics and the members of her own profession during her first London experience, but a magnificent revenge was in store for her.  Among the parts she sang at this chrysalis period were Cherubino in the “Nozze di Figaro,” Servilia in “La Clemenza di Tito,” and the role of the pretended shrew in Ferrari’s “Il Shaglio Fortunato.”  Mme. Pasta found herself at the end of the season a dire failure.  But she had the searching self-insight which stamps the highest forms of genius, and she determined to correct her faults, and develop her great but latent powers.  Suddenly she disappeared from the view of the operatic world, and buried herself in a retired Italian city, where she studied with intelligent and tireless zeal under M. Scappa, a maestro noted for his power of kindling the material of genius.  Occasionally she tested herself in public.  An English nobleman who heard her casually at this time said:  “Other singers find themselves endowed with a voice and leave everything to chance.  This woman leaves nothing to chance, and her success is therefore certain.”  She subjected herself to a course of severe and incessant study to subdue her voice.  To equalize it was impossible.  There was a portion of the scale which differed from the rest in quality, and remained to the last “under a veil,” to use the Italian term.  Some of her notes were always out of time, especially at the beginning of a performance, until the vocalizing machinery became warmed and mellowed by passion and