Alice Barbi

[2] A review by William Beatty-Kingston in The Theatre praised the two chamber music recitals she gave at Prince's Hall in July 1886.

He referred to her as the best cantatrice di camera in Europe and described her singing as "the outcome of a rare and surprising combination of natural gifts and indefatigable cultivation."

Beatty-Kingston wrote that "All the laudatory adjectives in my vocabulary are insufficient to express my sense of the beauty, grace and poetical feeling characterising her rendering of these compositions, one and all.

Barbi found an ardent admirer in German composer Johannes Brahms and the pair were close friends in his final years.

While their relationship was platonic, it was the subject of gossip and Brahms told Ignaz Brüll that she was the only woman he had wanted to marry after middle age.

[6] Following Stomersee's death in 1917, Barbi married Pietro della Torreta, the Italian Ambassador to Great Britain, in 1920.