A quarter of a century is a long reign for any queen, a brilliant one
for an opera queen in these modern days, when the "wear and tear" of
stage-life is so exacting. For so long a time lasted the supremacy
of Mme. Grisi, and it was justified by a remarkable combination of
qualities, great physical loveliness, a noble voice, and dramatic
impulse, which, if not precisely inventive, was yet large and
sympathetic. A celebrated English critic sums up her great qualities
and her defects thus: "As an artist calculated to engage, and retain
the average public, without trick or affectation, and to satisfy by her
balance of charming attributes--by the assurance, moreover, that she was
giving the best she knew how to give--she satisfied even those who had
received much deeper pleasure and had been impressed with much deeper
emotion in the performances of others. I have never tired of Mme. Grisi
during five-and-twenty years; but I have never been in her case under
one of those spells of intense enjoyment and sensation which make an
epoch in life, and which leave a print on memory never to be effaced by
any later attraction, never to be forgotten so long as life and power to
receive shall endure."

Giulietta Grisi was the younger daughter of M. Gaetano Grisi, an Italian
officer of engineers, in the service of Napoleon, and was born at Milan,
July 2, 1812. Her mother's sister was the once celebrated Grassini, who,
as the contemporary of Mrs. Billington and Mme. Mara, had shared the
admiration of Europe with these great singers. Thence probably she and
her sister Giuditta, ten years her elder, inherited their gift of song.
Giuditta was for a good while regarded as a prodigy by her friends, and
acquired an excellent rank on the concert and operatic stage, but she
was so far outshone by her more gifted sister, that her name is now
only one of the traditions of that throng of talented and hard-working
artists who have contributed much to the stability of the lyric stage,