She next appeared successively as _Rosina, Ni-netta, and Tancredi_,
winning fresh laurels in them all, not only by her superb skill in
vocalizing, but by her versatility of dramatic conception and the ease
with which she entered into the most opposite phases of feeling
and motive. She covered Rossini's elaborate fioriture with a fresh
profusion of ornament, but always with a dexterity which saved it from
the reproach of being overladen. She performed _Semiramide_ with Mme.
Pisaroni, and played Zerlina to Sontag's _Donna Anna_. Her habit of
treating such dramatic parts as _Ninetta, Zerlina_, and _Amina_ was the
occasion of keen controversy among the critics of the time. Entirely
averse to the conventional method of idealizing the character of the
country girl out of all semblance to nature, Malibran was essentially
realistic in preserving the rusticity, awkwardness, and _naivete_ of
peasant-life. One critic argued: "It is by no means rare to discover in
the humblest walk of life an inborn grace and delicacy of Nature's own
implanting; and such assuredly is the model from which characters like
_Ninetta_ and _Zerlina_ ought to be copied." But there were others who
saw in the vigor, breadth, and verisimilitude of Mme. Malibran's stage
portraits of the peasant wench the truest and finest dramatic justice.
A great singer of our own age, Mme. Pauline Lucca, seems to have modeled
her performances of the operatic rustic after the same method. In such
characters as __Susanna in the "Nozze di Figaro," and _Fidalma_
in Cimarosa's "Il Matrimonio Segreto," her talent for lyric comedy
impressed the _cognoscenti_ of London with irresistible power. She was
fascinated by the ludicrous, and was wont to say that she was anxious
to play the _Duenna_ in "Il Barbiere" for the sake of the grotesque
costume. In playing _Fidalma_ the drollery of her tone and manner, the
richness and originality of her comic humor, were incomparable. Her
daring, however, prompted her to do strange things, which would have