Studio portrait of opera singer Rosina Carandini (Palmer). Melbourne, late 1860s.

A$500 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 102 x 63 mm; verso with the imprint of C. Hewitt, Photographer, Australasian Studio, 95 Swanston St. Melbourne , a fully contemporary inscription in ink identifying the sitter as Rosina Carandini , and a death notice cut from Melbourne newspaper recording her death in 1932; the print and the mount are both in excellent condition. Rosina Martha Hosanah Palmer (née Carandini, 1844-1932) was born in Hobart Town, the eldest of five daughters of renowned Australian opera singer Madame Marie Carandini (née Burgess, 1826-1894) and her husband Jerome Carandini, Marquis of Sarzano (1803-1870). Her mother had arrived in Van Diemen s Land from England with her family as a young girl in 1833 and had married the counter-tenor Jerome Carandini, the tenth marquis of Sarzano, in Hobart in 1843, shortly aftermaking her operatic debut. For the next few years Marie and her husband moved between Hobart and Sydney, where Marie studied under Isaac Nathan and Sara Flower and began her career in earnest under the stage name Madame Carandini. Along with Walter Sherwin, Madame Carandini formed a travelling opera company which garnered great critical acclaim in the colonies and the United States. All of her daughters became professional singers; Rosina, Lizzie and the dazzlingly beautiful Fanny were the most successful, often performing together as a group. This portrait of Rosina, by Charles Hewitt, was probably taken around the time that she performed

• Binding: Hardcover

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