Pauline Garcia’s voice was a rebel which she had had to subdue, not a vassal to command, like the glorious organ of Mme. Grisi, but her harsh and unmanageable notes had been tutored by a despotic drill into great beauty and pliancy.  Like that of her sister in quality, it combined the two registers of contralto and soprano from low F to C above the lines, but the upper part of an originally limited mezzo-soprano had been literally fabricated by an iron discipline, conducted by the girl herself with all the science of a master.  Like Malibran, too, she had in her voice the soul-stirring tone, the sympathetic and touching character by which the heart is thrilled.  Her singing was expressive, descriptive, thrilling, full, equal and just, brilliant and vibrating, especially in the medium and in the lower chords.  Capable of every style of art, it was adapted to all the feelings of nature, but particularly to outbursts of grief, joy, or despair.  “The dramatic coloring which her voice imparts to the slightest shades of feeling and passion is a real phenomenon of vocalization which can not be analyzed,” says Escudier.  “No singer we ever heard, with the exception of Malibran,” says another critic, “could produce the same effect by means of a few simple notes.  It is neither by the peculiar power, the peculiar depth, nor the peculiar sweetness of these tones that the sensation is created, but by something indescribable in the quality which moves you to tears in the very hearing.”

Something of this impression moved the general mind of connoisseurs on her first dramatic appearance.  Her style, execution, voice, expression, and manner so irresistibly reminded her fellow-performers of the lamented Malibran, that tears rolled down their cheeks, yet there was something radically different withal peculiar to the singer.  This singular resemblance led to a curious incident afterward in Paris.  A young lady was taking a music-lesson from Lablache, who had lodgings in the same house with Mlle. Garcia.  The basso was explaining the manner in which Malibran gave the air they were practicing.  Just then a voice was heard in the adjoining room singing the cavatina—­the voice of Mdlle.  Garcia.  The young girl was struck with a fit of superstitious terror as if she had seen a phantom, and fainted away on her seat.

Yet in person there was but a slight resemblance between the two sisters.  Pauline had a tall, slender figure in her youth, and her physiognomy, Jewish in its cast, though noble and expressive, was so far from being handsome that when at rest the features were almost harsh in their irregularity.  But, as in the case of many plain women, emotion and sensibility would quickly transfigure her face into a marvelous beauty and fascination, far beyond the loveliness of line and tint.  Her forehead was broad and intellectual, the hair jet-black, the complexion pale, the large, black eyes ardent and full of fire.  Her carriage was singularly majestic and easy, and a conscious nobility gave her bearing a loftiness which impressed all beholders.