her in the celebration of high mass, interrupted the divine service by their applause, an indecorum which the cardinal could only suppress by disallowing her to take part in the performance. In her fifteenth year the father of Angelica, who was a merchant, found his affairs so embarrassed in consequence of the political disturbances of the time, that he yielded to her ardent desire to appear upon the stage, and she accordingly sang at Venice at that early age with distinguished success. This was the commencement of one of the most brilliant careers that has ever been accomplished by a public vocalist. She then sang at all the chief theatres of Italy, and about the end of 1801 went to Lisbon to gain new honours. She remained there for five years, and in 1806 married M. Valabreque, who had been an officer in the 8th French hussars, and was then attached to the French embassy. Their union was the result of the romantic coincidents of their having each, on the first occasion of their meeting, secretly resolved to marry none but the other. From the time of their marriage, her husband undertook the entire conduct of her affairs; he contracted her engagements, managed her concerts, received her payments, disbursed her expenses, and, it has been said, squandered much of her earnings at the gaming-table; whatever may be the truth of this last report, it is certain that she lived in undisturbed happiness with him. She went from Lisbon to Madrid with letters to the queen from the court of Portugal; thence to Paris, and next proceeded to London. She made her first appearance here at the King's theatre, 13th December, 1806, in Portogallo's opera of Semiramide, and the sensation she created was wholly unexampled in the history of the lyric stage. She was re-engaged the following season, when her salary of £2000 was increased to £5000, the amount of which was more than doubled by her receipts for singing at concerts during the six months, which were then the extent of the London season. The enormous sum paid to her at the theatre, necessitated such limitation of the salaries of other singers, that no one of any talent, besides herself, was engaged; so great, however, was her attraction, that the establishment was most prosperous, though this was its only resource. M. Valabreque accordingly increased his demands for a subsequent season, an exaction which the management resisted; but he readily obtained his own terms for the following year. Madame Catalani was no less sought at the English theatres than required at the Italian, and she was sometimes engaged to sing God Save the King, and Rule Britannia, at both Drury Lane and Covent Garden on the same evening. She remained in England, the idol of all classes, until the first restoration of the Bourbons, when she went to Paris by invitation of Louis XVIII., who had heard her in England, and who gave her the direction of the Théatre Italien, with a subvention of 160,000 francs. Upon the return of Napoleon, she quitted France for Germany; but revisited Paris in 1816 to resume her management and to experience a repetition of her London success. Her husband continued the policy of making her the sole attraction of the opera, a policy by which even her prodigious popularity was exhausted, and made critics discuss the decline of her powers. After the season of 1818 she went to Berlin, then appeared in all the principal cities of Germany, and finally at Vienna, where the magistracy had a medal struck in acknowledgment of the benefits to public charities that resulted from her performances. She next visited Russia, where, besides a popular reception totally unprecedented, she experienced such personal courtesies from the nobility, and from the emperor himself, as have been accorded to no other artist. In the summer of 1821 Madame Catalani returned to London, where, contrary to the opinion of the French critics, the writer in the Musical Quarterly Review, in noticing her first concert, speaks of her transcendant powers of voice, of execution and of declamation, as undiminished in every respect. She sung at concerts here in each of the two following years, including the famous festivals of 1823 at York and Birmingham; and in 1824 reappeared on the stage at the King's theatre, where she gave her last series of theatrical performances, and in this year took her final leave of England. She continued to give concerts in the chief continental cities until 1827, when she retired with her three children to an estate she had purchased at Florence, in which city she founded a musical academy.
Madame Catalani's munificent liberality to charitable institutions and to members of her own profession, is remembered in every place she visited; besides large donations in money, she gave concerts for the benefit of the poor wherever she found opportunity to do so, the results of which were always as advantageous to the necessitous as honourable to herself. Her private character was as spotless as her public career was brilliant. Her manners were amiable, and the natural simplicity of these had a charm that counterbalanced her manifest educational deficiencies. The fascination of her personal appearance had a considerable share in the unparalleled effect of her singing, and this was a type of all the admirable qualities of her character. Her voice was remarkable for its quality, power, and great compass, extending upwards to G in altissimo. She possessed a most voluble execution—evinced in her singing of the air Son Regina, in the last act of Portogallo's Semiramide, and of Rode's air with variations for the violin, which she was the first vocalist to attempt. Her impressive declamation was best exhibited in some of Handel's songs, in our two national airs, and in Non piú an drai, from Mozart's Figaro, which was a favourite concert song with her. All these remarkable qualifications were entirely natural to her, for her artistic training was of the shallowest description, and she was almost entirely without technical knowledge. She is variously stated to have been passionately fond of the stage, and to have had great repugnance to it; be this as it may, her dramatic talent, both in tragedy and comedy, appears to have made a wonderful effect during the first years of her performances, however she may have neglected to exercise it on the occasion of her reappearance. Unique as were her powers, she must be regarded rather as a phenomenon in art than as an artist; for, besides that she allowed no parallel talent to share her applause, the operas which, for the most part, she chose to sing were of the flimsiest character, and thus, while she was the meteor of her own time, she has bequeathed a memory, but no influence to ours.—G. A. M.
CATEL, Charles Simon, a musician, was born at Aigle in the Pays de Vaud in June, 1773, and died at Paris, November 29, 1830. He went early to Paris where, through the interest of Sacchini, he was admitted a pupil of the école royale de chant et de déclamation, an institution founded in 1783 by Papillon de la Ferté. Here he studied the pianoforte successively under Gobert and Gossec, and composition under the latter; when fourteen years of age, he was appointed accompanyist and professor in this school, and three years later he was engaged as accompanyist at the opera, and held the office till more important avocations induced him to resign it in 1802. The most important circumstance of his life was his friendship with Sarette, which commenced in 1790, and continued without interruption. This led to his appointment as chief of the corps de musique of the national guard, which Sarette established; and in 1795, upon the organization of the conservatoire, in which the same politician was principally concerned, to his being included in the list of professors. Catel's first important essay as a composer was a "De Profundis" for the funeral of M. Gouvion, major-general of the national guard, in 1792. He wrote a vast number of marches and other pieces of military music, besides some compositions of far higher pretension, in which a vocal chorus was combined with wind instruments, and which were performed at the public military festivals. His first opera, "Semiramis," was given in 1802, with little success. He wrote seven other works of this class, of which "Wallace," produced in 1817, was the most esteemed. He wrote also a ballet, and a portion of an opera with other composers. The production by which the name of Catel is most extensively known, is his "Treatise on Harmony," written for the use of the conservatoire. The principles expounded in this work were submitted to and approved by a committee of professors, under whose authority it was adopted in the conservatoire immediately on its publication in 1802. Catel's system is opposed to that of Rameau, which was in general use in France before this work appeared. Its view of the subject is derived from earlier German theorists; this consists in the classification of harmonic combinations as natural, namely, derived from harmonic vibrations; and artificial, namely, produced by suspension or other forms of preparation; it traces all the natural combinations to one fundamental root, and shows one general principle to prevail for the treatment of each of them. It is held in the highest esteem in France, and is still the class-book of the conservatoire. This work rendered its author a special mark of the attacks levelled against the conservatoire by the musicians not comprised in the staff of the institution; and his intimacy with Sarette drew upon him further invectives in connection with the same seminary. It was not till 1810 that Catel was added to Cherubini, Gossec,
