in her best days,” said one critic, “had Grisi been heard with greater effect, and never were her talents as an actress more conspicuously displayed.”  At the conclusion of the performance the departing singer received an ovation.  Bouquets were flung in profusion, vociferous applause rang through the theatre, and when she reappeared the whole house rose.  The emotion which was evinced by her admirers was evidently shared by herself.

The American engagement of Grisi and Mario under Mr. Hackett was very successful, the first appearance occurring at Castle Garden, August 18, 1854.  The seventy performances given throughout the leading cities are still a delightful reminiscence among old amateurs, in spite of the great singers who have since visited this country and the more stable footing of Italian opera in later times.  Mr. Hackett paid the two artists eighty-five thousand dollars for a six months’ tour, and declared, at a public banquet he gave them at the close of the season, that his own profits had been sixty thousand dollars.  Mme. Grisi had intended to retire permanently when she was still in the full strength of her great powers, but she was persuaded to reappear before the London public on her return from New York.  It became evident that her voice was beginning to fail rapidly, and that she supplied her vocal shortcomings by dramatic energy.  She continued to sing in opera in various parts of Europe, but the public applause was evidently rather a struggle on the part of her audiences to pay tribute to a great name than a spontaneous expression of pleasure, and at Madrid she was even hissed in the presence of the royal court, which gave a special significance to the occasion.  Mr. Gye, of the Royal Italian Opera in London, in 1861 made a contract with her not to appear on the stage again for five years, evidently assuming that five years were as good as fifty.  But it was hard for the great singer, who had been the idol of the public for more than a quarter of a century, to quit the scene of her splendid triumphs.  So in 1866 she again essayed to tread the stage as a lyric queen, in the role of Lucrezia, but the result was a failure.  It is not pleasant to record these spasmodic struggles of a failing artist, tenacious of that past which had now shut its gates on her for ever and a day.  Her career was ended, but she had left behind a name of imperishable luster in the annals of her art.  She died of inflammation of the lungs during a visit to Berlin, November 25, 1869.  Her husband, Mario, retired from the stage in 1867, and suffered, it is said, at the last from pecuniary reverses, in spite of the fact that he had earned such enormous sums during his operatic career.  His concert tour in the United States, under the management of Max Strakosch, in 1871-’72. is remembered only with a feeling of pain.  It was the exhibition of a magnificent wreck.  The touch of the great artist was everywhere visible, but the voice was utterly lost.  Signor Mario is still living at Rome, and has resumed the rank which he laid aside to enter a stage career.