Whether speaking or singing, I have never heard such a voice as Mario’s. It was pure music. The best testimony to its quality came to me secondhand from Richard Wagner. I was talking with Siegfried Wagner about voices, and I said that without a doubt the finest tenor that I had ever known was Mario. “Yes,” said Siegfried, “my father always said the same thing.” This witness is the more valuable as no one could accuse Wagner of any predilection for the Italian school of song. Giuglini, the tenor of the rival house where Titiens reigned supreme, used to be compared with Mario; but in my judgment this was absurd. Giuglini’s voice, lovely as it was, had a slight defect of “throatiness,” whereas Mario’s voice came pure and clear from the chest. On the stage there was absolutely no comparison between the two men. Mario’s great beauty and his marvellous power of acting, combined with an irresistible personal charm, made him unique. It would be difficult to imagine anything more thrilling than the tragedy of the two great duets with Grisi in the _Huguenots_ and the _Favorita_. Older people were wont to say that when he first appeared on the stage he was a “stick,” and that it was Grisi who taught him and inspired him with the fire of her own genius. If that was so, she found an apt pupil. She was certainly an incomparable actress, but the talent must have been latent in him too, even though the credit of having called it forth may belong to her. In his last years, when he had retired from the stage, had lost his fortune, and was custode of a museum, Queen Margherita was extremely anxious to hear him sing, and commissioned Edoardo Vera, her music master, to try and get him to do so. After some difficulty Vera, who told me the story, succeeded, and transposed one or two of his old songs for him so that he was really singing as a baritone. So managed, Vera told me that the voice was as velvety and beautiful as ever. The Queen was delighted, and the dear old Mario, white-haired and white-bearded, charmed with his reception. I can well believe in the unimpaired beauty of so much of the singing voice as remained, for when last I saw him in 1879, his speaking voice was still instinct with the same music that I remembered when in the opening of the _Barbiere_ he used to call out to Figaro behind the scenes. He died on the 11th of December, 1883.