After an absence of three years Mme. Pasta returned to England, and her opening performance of Medea was aided by the talents of Rubini, Lablache, and Fanny Ayton.  Rubini performed the character of Egeus, and the duets between the king of tenors and Pasta were so remarkable in a musical sense as to rival the dramatic impression made by her great acting.  She was no exception to the rule that very great tragic actors are rarely devoid of a strong comic individuality.  In Erreco’s “Prova d’un Opera Seria,” an opera caricaturing the rehearsals of a serious opera at the house of the prima donna and at the theatre, her performance was so arch, whimsical, playful, and capricious, that its drollery kept the audience in a roar of laughter, while Lablache, as “the composer,” seconded her humor by that talent for comedy which Ronconi alone has ever approached.  Lablache also appeared with Pasta in “Anna Bolena,” and the great basso, mighty in bulk, mighty in voice, and mighty in genius, fairly startled the public by his extraordinary resemblance to Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII.

After singing a farewell engagement in Paris, Mme. Pasta went to Milan to enjoy the last great triumph of her life in 1832 at La Scala.

She was supported by an admirable company, among whom were Donizetti the tenor and Giulia Grisi, then youthful and inexperienced, but giving promise of what she became in her splendid prime of beauty and genius.  Bellini had written for these artists the opera of “Norma,” and the first performance was directed by the composer himself.  Pasta’s singing and acting alone made the work successful, for at the outset it was not warmly liked by the public.  Several years afterward in London she also saved the work from becoming a fiasco, the singular fact being that “Norma,” now one of the great standard works of the lyric stage, took a number of years to establish itself firmly in critical and popular estimation.

We have now reached a period of Pasta’s life where its chronicle becomes painful.  It is never pleasant to watch the details of the decadence which comes to almost all art-careers.  Her warmest admirers could not deny that Pasta was losing her voice.  Her consummate art shone undimmed, but her vocal powers, especially in respect of intonation, displayed the signs of wear.  For several years, indeed, she sang in Paris, Italy, and London with great eclat, but the indescribable luster of her singing had lost its bloom and freshness.  She continued to receive Continental honors, and in 1840, after a splendid season in St. Petersburg, she was dismissed by the Czar with magnificent presents.  In Berlin, about this time, she was received with the deepest interest and commiseration, for she lost nearly all her entire fortune by the failure of Engmuller, a banker of Vienna.  She filled a long engagement in Berlin, which was generously patronized by the public, not merely out of admiration of the talents of the artist, but with the wish of repairing in some small measure her great losses.  After 1841 Pasta retired from the stage, spending her winters at Milan, her summers at Lake Como, and devoting herself to training pupils in the higher walks of the lyric art.