to execute with fluency and correctness the chromatic scales, ascending and descending, and it was by sheer hard practice that she learned to swell and diminish her accents; to emit tones full, large, and free from nasal or guttural sounds, to manage her respiration skillfully, and to seize the delicate shades of vocalization.  In fioriture and vocal effects her taste was faultless, and she had an agreeable manner of uniting her tones by the happiest transitions, and diminishing with insensible gradations.  She excelled in the effects of vocal embroidery, and her passion for ornamentation tempted her to disregard the dramatic situation in order to give way to a torrent of splendid fioriture, which dazzled the audience without always satisfying them.

The characters expressing placidity, softness, and feminine grace, like Lucia, Amina, and Zerli-na, involving the sentimental rather than the passionate, were best fitted to Mme. Persiani’s powers as artist.  She belonged to the same school as Sontag, not only in character of voice, but in all her sympathies and affinities; yet she was not incapable of a high order of tragic emotion, as her performance of the mad scene of “Lucia di Lammermoor” gave ample proof, but this form of artistic expression was not spontaneous and unforced.  It was only well accomplished under high pressure.  Escudin said of her, “It is not only the nature of her voice which limits her—­it is also the expression of her acting, we had almost said the ensemble of her physical organization.  She knows her own powers perfectly.  She is not ambitious, she knows exactly what will suit her, and is aware precisely of the nature of her talent.”  Although she attained a high reputation in some of Mozart’s characters, as, for example, Zerlina, the Mozart music was not well fitted to her voice and tastes.  The brilliancy and flexibility of her organ and her airy style were far more suited to the modern Italian than to the severe German school.

A charming compliment was paid by Malibran, who knew how to do such things with infinite taste and delicacy, to Persiani, when the latter lady was singing at Naples in 1835:  while the representative of Lucia was changing her costume between the acts, a lady entered her dressing-room, and complimented her in warmest terms on the excellence of her singing.  The visitor then took the long golden tresses floating over Persiani’s shoulders, and asked, “Is it all your own?” On being laughingly answered in the affirmative, Malibran, for it was she, said, “Allow me, signora, since I have no wreath of flowers to offer you, to twine you one with your own beautiful hair.”  Mme. Persiani’s artistic tour through Italy, in 1835, culminated in Florence with one of those exhibitions of popular tyranny and exaction which so often alternate with enthusiasm in the case of audiences naturally ardent and impressible, and consequently capricious.  When the singer arrived at the Tuscan capital, she