Maria Malibran

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Lore & Background

María Felicia García Sitches was born into a famous Spanish musical family in Paris. Her mother was Joaquina Sitches, an actress and operatic singer. Her father Manuel García was a celebrated tenor much admired by Rossini, having created the role of Count Almaviva in his The Barber of Seville. García was also a composer and an influential vocal instructor, and he was her first voice teacher. He was described as inflexible and tyrannical; the lessons he gave his daughter became constant quarrels between two powerful egos. Malibran first appeared on stage in Naples with her father in Ferdinando Paër's Agnese when she was eight years old. At 17, she was a singer in the choir of the King's Theatre in London. When prima donna Giuditta Pasta became indisposed, García suggested that his daughter take over in the role of Rosina in The Barber of Seville. The audience loved the young singer, and she continued to sing this role until the end of the season. When the season closed, García immediately took his operatic troupe to New York—the first time Italian opera was performed in New York City. Over nine months, Maria sang the lead roles in eight operas, two of which were written by her father. In New York, she met and hastily married a banker, Francois Eugene Malibran, who was 28 years her senior. It is thought that her father forced Maria to marry him in return for the banker's promise to give Manuel García 100,000 francs. However, according to other accounts, she married simply to escape her tyrannical father. A few months after the wedding, her husband declared bankruptcy, and Maria was forced to support him through her performances. After a year, she left Malibran and returned to Europe. In Europe, Malibran sang the title role at the premiere of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda. The opera was based on Schiller's play Mary Stuart, and as it portrayed Mary, Queen of Scots in a sympathetic light, censors demanded textual amendments, which Malibran often ignored. The Library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels conserves a series of interesting coloured costume projects for this play, created by Malibran, revealing her unsuspected drawing talent. Malibran became romantically involved with the Belgian violinist Charles Auguste de Bériot. The pair lived together as a common-law couple for six years and a child was born to them in 1833 (the piano pedagogue Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot), before Maria obtained an annulment of her marriage to Malibran. Felix Mendelssohn wrote an aria accompanied by a solo violin especially for the couple.

Reader's Guide

Malibran's significance lies in her remarkable vocal range—from E♭ below middle C to an E above the high C—which allowed her to sing both contralto and soprano roles. She is most closely associated with the operas of Rossini, who extolled her virtues: 'Ah! That wonderful creature! With her disconcerting musical genius she surpassed all who sought to emulate her, and with her superior mind, her breadth of knowledge and unimaginable fieriness of temperament she outshone all other women I have known.' She also enjoyed great success in Bellini's operas Norma, La sonnambula and I Capuleti e i Montecchi (as Romeo). Bellini wrote a new version of his I puritani to adapt it to her mezzo-soprano voice and even promised to write a new opera especially for her, but he died before he was able to do so. Her contemporaries included Rossini, Donizetti, Chopin, Mendelssohn and Liszt among her fans, though painter Eugène Delacroix accused her of lacking refinement and class and of trying to 'appeal to the masses who have no artistic taste.' French critic Castil-Blaze wrote: 'Malibran's voice was vibrant, full of brightness and vigor. Without ever losing her flattering timbre, this velvet tone that has given her so much seduction in tender and passionate arias. [...] Vivacity, accuracy, ascending chromatics runs, arpeggios, vocal lines dazzling with strength, grace or coquetry, she possessed all that the art can acquire.' In 1834, Malibran moved to England and began to perform in London and Europe. In Venice, she performed Bellini's La sonnambula on 8 April 1835, where she donated her performance to the dilapidated Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, inspiring its restoration. It was renamed Teatro Malibran and she was hailed and venerated as its patroness. In late May 1836, she starred in The Maid of Artois, written for her by Balfe. On 5 July 1836, she was out horse riding together with Lord William Lennox when she fell from her horse and suffered injuries from which she never recovered. She refused to see a physician and continued to perform. In September 1836 she was in Manchester participating in a music festival at the Manchester Cathedral collegiate church and Theatre Royal on Fountain Street. She collapsed on stage while performing encores at the theatre, but insisted on performing in the church the following morning and died after a week of agony, attended by her private physician. Her body was temporarily buried in the church after a public funeral before being moved to a mausoleum in Laeken Cemetery, near Brussels in Belgium. The Library of The Royal Conservatory of Brussels conserves, amongst others, the death mask, the poignant four-page funerary report of Dr. Belluomini as well as the authorisation of the Manchester ecclesiastical authority to have Malibran's body transferred to Brussels (Maria Malibran fund, B-Bc; FC-2-MM-006 sq.).

Did You Know?

• Malibran first appeared on stage at age eight in Naples, singing in Ferdinando Paër's Agnese with her father.
• She married banker Francois Eugene Malibran, who was 28 years her senior, possibly because her father wanted 100,000 francs.
• Felix Mendelssohn wrote an aria accompanied by a solo violin especially for Malibran and her partner Charles Auguste de Bériot.
• After donating her performance of La sonnambula to restore a dilapidated theatre in Venice, it was renamed Teatro Malibran.
• The Library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels holds Malibran's death mask and a four-page funerary report by Dr. Belluomini.