genius of her husband, and speedily persuaded him to retire from such a narrow sphere.  Lablache devoted a year to the serious study of singing, and to emancipating himself from the Neapolitan patois which up to this time had clung to him, after which he became primo basso at the Palermitan opera.  He was now twenty, and his voice had become developed into that suave and richly toned organ, such as was never bestowed on another man, ranging two octaves from E flat below to E flat above the bass stave.  An offer from the manager of La Scala, Milan, gratified his ambition, and he made his debut in 1817 as Dandini in “La Cenerentola.”  His splendid singing and acting made him brilliantly successful; but Lablache was not content with this.  His industry and attempts at improvement were incessant.  In fact this singer was remarkable through life, not merely for his professional ambition, but the zeal with which he sought to enlarge his general stores of knowledge and culture.  M. Scudo, in his agreeable recollections of Italian singers, informs us that at Naples Lablache had enjoyed the friendship and teaching of Mme. Mericoffre (a rich banker’s wife), known in Italy as La Cottellini, one of the finest artists of the golden age of Italian singing.  Mme. Lablache, too, was a woman of genius in her way, and her husband owed much to her intelligent and watchful criticism.  The fume of Lablache speedily spread through Europe.  He sang in all the leading Italian cities with equal success, and at Vienna, whither he went in 1824, his admirers presented him with a magnificent gold medal with a most flattering inscription.

He returned again to Naples after an absence of twelve years, and created a grand sensation at the San Carlo by his singing of Assur, in “Semiramide.”  The Neapolitans loaded him with honors, and sought to retain him in his native city, but this “pent-up Utica” could not hold a man to whom the most splendid rewards of his profession were offering themselves.  Lablache made his first appearance in London, in 1830, in “Il Matrimonio Segreto,” and almost from his first note and first step he took an irresistible hold on the English public, which lasted for nearly a quarter of a century.  It perplexed his admirers whether he was greater as a singer or as an actor.  We are told that he “was gifted with personal beauty to a rare degree.  A grander head was never more grandly set on human shoulders; and in his case time and the extraordinary and unwieldy corpulence which came with time seemed only to improve the Jupiter features, and to enhance their expression of majesty, or sweetness, or sorrow, or humor as the scene demanded.”  His very tall figure prevented his bulk from appearing too great.  One of his boots would have made a small portmanteau, and one could have clad a child in one of his gloves.  So great was his strength that as Leporello he sometimes carried off under one arm a singer of large stature representing