Banti made her _début_ in England in Bianchi's _Semiramide_, in which she introduced an air from one of Guglielmi's oratorios, with a violin _obbligato_ accompaniment, played first by Cramer, afterward by Viotti, Salomon, and Weichsell, the brother of Mrs. Billington. This song was of great length, and very fatiguing; but Banti was always encored in it, and never omitted to repeat it. At her benefit in the following year (1800) Banti performed in an opera, founded on the _Zenobia_ of Metastasio, by Lord Mount Edgcumbe, the author of the interesting "Reminiscences," to which, in the course of the present chapter I shall frequently have to refer. The "first man's" part was allotted to Roselli, a sopranist, who, however, had to transfer it to Viganoni, a tenor. Roselli, whose voice was failing him, soon afterwards left the country; and no other male soprano made his appearance at the King's Theatre until the arrival of Velluti, who sang twenty-five years afterwards in Meyerbeer's _Crociato_. Banti's favourite operas were Gluck's _Alceste_, in which she was called upon to repeat three of her airs every night; the _Iphigénie en Tauride_, by the same author; Paisiello's _Elfrida_, and _Nina_ or _La Pazza per Amore_; Nasolini's[61] _Mitridate_; and several operas by Bianchi, composed expressly for her. Before Banti's departure from England, she prevailed on Mrs. Billington to perform with her on the night of her benefit, leaving to the latter the privilege of assuming the principal character in any opera she might select. _Merope_ was chosen. Mrs. Billington took the part of the heroine, and Banti that of "Polifonte," though written for a tenor voice. The curiosity to hear these two celebrated singers in the same piece was so great, that the theatre was filled with what we so often read of in the newspapers, but so seldom see in actual life,--"an overflowing audience;" many ladies being obliged, for want of better places, to find seats on the stage. Banti died at Bologna, in 1806, bequeathing her larynx (of extraordinary size) to the town, the municipality of which caused it to be duly preserved in a glass bottle. Poor woman! she had by time dissipated the whole of her fortune, and had nothing else to leave. [Sidenote: MRS. BILLINGTON.]