A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Piccolomini, Maria
PICCOLOMINI, MARIA,
One of the stars of the London season of 1856, is a native of Tienna, in Tuscany, where she was born in 1834; she is consequently yet quite young. She is extremely beautiful, a delightful singer, an impressive actress, and noble in her family connections. All these circumstances combined to raise quite a furor among the excitable people of Turin, where she made her first appearance in Verdi's opera La Traviata. On the last night of her engagement at the theatre called Carignan, a vast conccurse of people assembled to greet her as she came forth, and were about to take the horses from her carriage, but she told them, with flushed cheek and flashing eyes, that men should not put themselves in the place of beasts—that Italy had other and nobler uses for her sons; and finding them set on paying her this degrading homage, she passed out of the theatre by a back door, and made her way to her hotel on foot. On a subsequent occasion her residence was surrounded at night by an excited crowd bent on manifesting their frantic delight at her musical powers. She sternly rebuked the young men of Italy for their levity, and pointed out how they could more nobly fulfil the great object of their existence. All this gives us the impression that Maria Piccolomini is not only a great musical artiste, but that she is great also in mind and character. A London audience would not manifest delight in so rapturous a manner as an Italian would, yet it was evident that on her first public appearance in our metropolis she made a great impression. Her voice is rather sweet than powerful, and she has the disadvantage of being small of stature; but her rich warbling melody, bursting forth in bird-like trills and gushes, is a thing to dwell in the memory, and remain "a joy for ever."