2-970-170 - /Heritage Images

Scene from Verdi's Opera, "La Traviata", at Her Majesty's Theatre, 1856. Opera singer Marietta Piccolomini was '...Descended from one of the most ancient and most illustrious patrician families of Rome...this gifted girl, urged on by an invincible impulse - with that confidence of success which is so often the companion of real genius - cast aside all the prerogatives of her high station, and, despite the tears and the entreaties of her noble relations of the houses of the Piccolomini and the Amalfi, she made her debut...Her success has been most brilliant. Her voice is exquisitely sweet-full of liquid birdlike notes-and is, moreover, of considerable power and compass. She is little more than seventeen years of age, and of considerable personal attractions. With such advantages as these, the success of any prima donna would be tolerably certain'. From "Illustrated London News", 1856.