Maria Felicita Malibran, the great contralto singer of the early part of the Nineteenth Century, died on September 23, at Manchester, in her twenty-eighth year. Taken from Paris to Naples at the age of three, she made her first appearance as a public singer in her fifth year. Two years later she studied solfeggio with Panseron. At the age of sixteen she made her debut as Rosina in "Barbiere di Seville" at London. The success of her first appearance was so great that she was at once engaged for the season. Next she appeared in New York, where she was a popular favorite for two years, singing in Mozart's "Don Giovanni," in "Tancred," "Romeo and Juliet," and two of her father's operas. Here she married a French merchant, Malibran. After her separation from him she returned to Paris, where she was engaged as prima donna at a salary of 50,000 francs. Thereafter she sang at every season in Paris, London, Milan, Rome and Naples. For one engagement of forty nights in Naples she received 100,000 francs. Both as a singer and woman she exercised an extraordinary fascination over her contemporaries. Only a few months before her death she married the violinist De Beriot. In England she suffered a severe fall from her horse, which shattered her health. After this she literally sang herself to death. Her loss was mourned most of all in France, where her death has been commemorated by Alfred de Musset's beautiful threnody ending with the lines: Die, then. Thy death is sweet, thy goal is won; What is called genius by men here below Is the great cry for Love; all else is but show; And since, soon or late, human love is undone, It is for great hearts and great voices like thine To die as thou didst--for Love all-divine. [Sidenote: Meyerbeer's "Huguenots"] [Sidenote: Gounod] [Sidenote: Chopin] [Sidenote: Liszt] [Sidenote: Georges Sand] [Sidenote: Death of Ampere] In France, great strides had been made in music, art and literature. Giacomo Meyerbeer, whose real name was Jacob Beer, surpassed the success of his "Robert le Diable" with his greatest opera "Les Huguenots," produced on February 20, at the Paris Opera House. The success of this masterpiece so disheartened Rossini that he resolved to write no more operas, and withdrew to Bologna. Charles Francois Gounod, on the other hand, now began his musical career by entering the Paris Conservatory. Frederick Chopin, the Polish composer, at this time was at the height of his vogue as the most _recherche_ pianist of Paris. He was the favorite of a circle of friends consisting of Meyerbeer, Bellini, Berlioz, Liszt, Balzac, and Heine. It was during this year that Liszt introduced Chopin to Madame Dudevant, better known as Georges Sand, the famous French novelist. Their attachment was the talk of Paris. Andre Marie Ampere, the noted French mathematician and physicist, died during this year at sixty-one years of age. He was the inventor of the electrical unit of measure which bears his name.