Grassini and Mrs. Billington having both retired from the stage a short
time previously. Lord Mount Edgcumbe tells us: "The great and far-famed
Catalani supplied the place of both, and for many years reigned alone;
for she would bear no rival, nor any singer sufficiently good to divide
the applause. It is well known," he says, "that her voice is of a most
uncommon quality; and capable of bearing exertions almost superhuman.
Her throat seems endowed (as is remarked by medical men) with a power of
expansion and muscular motion by no means usual; and when she throws
out all her voice to the utmost, it has a volume and strength quite
surprising; while its agility in divisions running up and down the scale
in semi-tones, and its compass in jumping over two octaves at once, are
equally astonishing. It were to be wished that she was less lavish in
the display of these wonderful powers, and sought to please more than
to surprise; but her taste is vicious, her excessive love of ornament
spoiling every simple air, and her greatest delight being in songs of
a bold and spirited character, where much is left to her discretion or
indiscretion, without being confined by the accompaniment, but in
which she can indulge in _ad libitum_ passages with a luxuriance
and redundance no other singer ever possessed, or if possessing ever
practiced, and which she carries to a fantastical excess."

Her London _début_ was on the 15th of December, 1806, in Portogallo's
opera of "La Semi-ramide," composed for the occasion. The music of
this work was of the most ephemeral nature, but Catalani's magnificent
singing and acting gave it a heroic dignity. She lavished all the
resources of her art on it. In one passage she dropped a double octave,
and finally sealed her reputation "by running up and down the chromatic
scale for the first time in the recollection of opera-goers.... It was
then new, although it has since been repeated to satiety, and even
noted down as an _obbligato_ division by Rossini, Meyerbeer, and others.