At the opening rehearsal the tenor was given his part to read at sight. When his first aria had been reached he sang it off with perfect phrasing and feeling, but exactly note for note as written. After he had finished the composer said, "Thank you, signer, very nice, but that was not at all what I wanted." He asked for an explanation, and was informed that the melody which had been written down was intended merely as a skeleton which the singer should clothe with whatever his imagination and artistic instinct prompted. The writer of the music asked him to go through it again, and this time to treat it exactly as though it were his own composition. The elder Garcia was skilful at improvising: consequently, in giving the aria for the second time, he made a number of alterations and additions, introducing runs, trills, roulades, and cadenzas, all of which were performed with the most brilliant execution. This time, when the end of the music was reached, the old composer shook him warmly by the hand. "Bravo! Magnificent! That was my music, as I wished it to be given." It may be noted that Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, in his 'Musical Reminiscences' (published in 1824), refers more than once to the same thing. In speaking of the famous male soprano, Pacchierotti, who made his _début_ in London in 1778, the following passage occurs:-- His voice was an extensive soprano, full and sweet.... His powers of execution were great; but he had too good taste and too good sense to make a display of them where it would have been misapplied, confining it to one _bravura_ song (_aria d'agilità_) in each opera, conscious that the chief delight of singing lay in touching expression and exquisite pathos.... He could not sing a song twice in exactly the same way, _yet never ... introduced an ornament that was not judicious and appropriate to the composition_. Again Lord Mount-Edgcumbe writes:-- Many songs of the old masters would be very indifferently sung by modern performers, not on account of their difficulty but their apparent facility. Composers when writing for a first-rate singer noted down merely a simple _tema_ with the slightest possible accompaniment, which, if sung as written, would be cold, bald, and insipid. It was left to the singer to fill up the outline, to give it the light and shade and all its grace and expression, which requires not only a thorough knowledge of music but the greatest taste and judgment. But to return to the elder Garcia and his family. It was during this stay at Naples that little Maria made her first public appearance, when she was barely five years old. The anecdote was one which Manuel Garcia was very fond of relating. The opera in which the diminutive vocalist made her _début_ was Paër's "Agnese," in which there was a child's part.