During the season of 1835 Mme. Malibran appeared for Mr. Bunn at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in twenty-six performances, for which she received L3,463.  Among other operas she appeared in Balfe’s new work, “The Maid of Artois,” which, in spite of its beautiful melody, has never kept its hold on the stage.  Her Leonora in Beethoven’s “Fidelio” was considered by many the peer of Mme. Schroder-Devrient’s grand performance.  Her labors during this season were gigantic.  She would rise at 5 a.m., and practice for several hours, rehearsing before a mirror and inventing attitudes.  It was in this way that she conceived the “stage-business” which produced such an electric impression in “Gli Orazi,” when the news of her lover’s death is announced to the heroine.  “While the rehearsals of ‘The Maid of Artois’ were going on from day to day—­and Mme. Malibran’s rehearsals were not so many hours of sauntering indifference—­she would, immediately after they were finished, dart to one or two concerts, and perhaps conclude the day by singing at an evening party.  She pursued the same course during her performance of that arduous character,” thus wrote one of the critics of the time, for the interest which Malibran excited was so great that the public loved to hear of all the details of her remarkable career.

Shortly after her marriage in the spring of 1836, Mme. de Beriot was thrown from her horse while attending a hunting-party in England, and sustained serious internal injury, which she neglected to provide against by medical treatment, concealing it even from her husband.  Indeed, she sang on the same evening, and her prodigious facility in tours de force was the subject of special comment, for she seemed spurred to outdo herself from consciousness of physical weakness.  When she returned to England again in the following September, her failing health was painfully apparent to all.  Yet her unconquerable energy struggled against her sufferings, and she would permit herself no relaxation.  In vain her husband and her good friend Lablachc remonstrated.  A hectic, feverish excitement pervaded all her actions.  She was engaged to sing at the Manchester Musical Festival, and at the rehearsals she would laugh and cry hysterically by turns.

At the first performance of the festival in the morning, she was carried out of her dressing-room in a swoon, but the dying singer was bent on doing what she considered her duty.  She returned and delivered the air of Abraham by Cimarosa.  Her thrilling tones and profound dejection made a deep impression on the audience.  The next day she rallied from her sick-bed and insisted on being carried to the festival building, where she was to sing a duet with Mme. Caradori-Allen.  This was the dying song of the swan, and it is recorded that her last effort was one of the finest of her life.  The assembly, entranced by the genius and skill of the singer, forgot her precarious condition and demanded a repetition.  Malibran again sang with all the passionate fire of her nature, and her wonderful voice died away in a prolonged shake on her very topmost note.  It was her last note on earth, for she was carried thence to her deathbed.