Giudetta Pasta

HCJ learned the fashionable accomplishments of singing and playing the harp (the latter from the great singer Giudetta Pasta , who consented to teach her when she was seventeen). Her upbringing was not particularly literary.

Later AK studied singing in Paris and at Lake Como in Italy, at a half hour's remove from Milan. One of her teachers was the famous Italian singer Giudetta Pasta (who was both...

Norma, which had first opened in Milan on 26 December 1831, was already well on its way to becoming Bellini's most popular work. Its star role had been first interpreted by AK 's teacher...

Sydney Morgan set up her first salon during her time in Paris. After returning to her home in Kildare Street and renovating it after its mistreatment by tenants, she made it the site of...

It may be significant that the eponymous heroine of Judith bears the English version of the Christian name of AK 's teacher and exemplar Giudetta Pasta . Judith, said AK 's daughter, was drawn as...

The first volume opens with a poem, At Daybreak. The second is centred, most importantly, on the unfinished second novel Judith, and closes with a piece entitled When I am Dead. Each...