Chorley, whose warmth of admiration is always tempered by accurate art-knowledge and the keenest insight, recurs in later years to Pas-ta’s Medea in these eloquent words:  “The air of quiet concentrated vengeance, seeming to fill every fiber of her frame—­as though deadly poison were flowing through her veins—­with which she stood alone wrapped in her scarlet mantle, as the bridal procession of Jason and Creusa swept by, is never to be forgotten.  It must have been hard for those on the stage with her to pass that draped statue with folded arms—­that countenance lit up with awful fire, but as still as death and inexorable as doom.  Where again has ever been seen an exhibition of art grander than her Medea’s struggle with herself ere she consents to murder her children?—­than her hiding the dagger with its fell purpose in her bosom under the strings of her distracted hair?—­than of her steps to and fro as of one drunken with frenzy—­torn with the agonies of natural pity, yet still resolved on her awful triumph?  These memories are so many possessions to those who have seen them so long as reason shall last; and their reality is all the more assured to me because I have not yet fallen into the old man’s habit of denying or doubting new sensations.”  The Paris public, it need not be said, even more susceptible to the charm of great acting than that of great singing, were in a frenzy of admiration over this wonderful new picture added to the portrait-gallery of art.  In this performance Pasta had the advantage of absorbing the whole interest of the opera; in her other great Parisian successes she was obliged to share the admiration of the public with the tenor Garcia (Malibran’s father), the barytone Bordogni, and Levasseur the basso, next to Lablache the greatest of his artistic kind.

A story is told of a distinguished critic that he persuaded himself that, with such power of portraying Medea’s emotions, Pasta must possess Medea’s features.  Having been told that the features of the Colchian sorceress had been found in the ruins of Herculaneum cut on an antique gem, his fantastic enthusiasm so overcame his judgment that he took a journey to Italy expressly to inspect this visionary cameo, which, it need not be said, existed only in the imagination of a practical joker.

In 1824 Pasta made her first English appearance at the King’s Theatre, at which was engaged an extraordinary assemblage of talent, Mesdames Colbran-Rossini, Catalani, Konzi di Begnis, “Vestris, Caradori, and Pasta.  The great tragedienne made her first appearance in Desdemona, and, as all Europe was ringing with her fame, the curiosity to see and hear her was almost unparalleled.  Long before the beginning of the opera the house was packed with an intensely expectant throng.  For an English audience, idolizing the memory of Shakespeare, even Rossini’s fine music, conducted by that great composer himself, could hardly under ordinary circumstances