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CHOICE Review

For Fitzlyon, Maria Malibran is the personification of the Romantic Age. Although the author details Malibran's phenomenal success as singing actress, she appears most interested in the cultism that developed around the protagonist and its impact on novelists, poets, and painters of the era. Events of Malibran's personal life and career are treated sequentially and geographically: New York, Paris, Italy, London, and finally Manchester. The Malibran legacy resulted because her dramatic life and early death exemplified Romantic attitudes. Maria is here presented as saint and martyr of French Romanticism of the 1830s, as well as great artist. The 22-page index reads like a directory of important 19th-century celebrities. Illustrations (16 pages), footnoting, and a select bibliography lend authority, yet the style is nonscholarly and narrative. Howard Bushnell's Maria Malibran (CH, Jun '80) uses more extensive quotation and documentation from contemporary letters and critical sources. However, Fitzlyon's Maria Malibran, with its emphasis upon the diva cult, is not merely entertaining but also instructive. The attractively printed and well-bound volume is a good addition to the extensive Malibran literature. It will appeal to general readers and undergraduates, but is sufficiently documented to interest the specialist as well.