Blanche Roosevelt

She and her husband, the Marquis d'Alligri, returned to Europe by 1882 where she pursued a career in journalism and literature, writing biographies and novels.

Rosavella, she made her singing debut at the Royal Italian Opera House, Covent Garden, London, as Violetta in La Traviata.

[8] The Times noted the enthusiastic reception she received from the Covent Garden audience, and the paper's reviewer praised her acting as well as her singing.

[7] Later in 1880, together with John McCaull, she co-founded and produced a new opera company, the Blanche Roosevelt English Opera Company,[15] appearing in its productions, which were financial failures, of Alfred Cellier's The Sultan of Mocha (Union Square Theatre, New York, September 1880) and B. C. Stephenson and Cellier's operatic adaptation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Masque of Pandora (Boston Theatre, January 1881).

[2] Soon afterwards, she retired from the stage, largely at the behest of her husband, Signor Macchetta, an Italian who had succeeded to the title of Marquis d'Alligri.

[3][7] Roosevelt became acquainted with important figures in the world of literature and the arts, including (in addition to Longfellow) Giuseppe Verdi, Victorien Sardou, Wilkie Collins, Gustave Doré and Guy de Maupassant, whose mistress she became in 1884.

Roosevelt's first book wase The Home Life of Henry W. Longfellow (1882), followed by the novel Stage-Struck; or, She would Be an Opera Singer (1884), The Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré (1885, for which she was reportedly the first American woman honored by the French Academy), and another novel, The Copper Queen (1886), which was adapted for the stage by Sardou.

[3][7][8] She had earlier worked for American newspapers as a correspondent from Paris in 1875; in early 1887, she began a similar assignment in Milan, reporting on the premiere of Verdi's Otello.

"[18] Later books by Roosevelt, then referred to as the Marchesa d'Alligri (all published posthumously), included Elisabeth of Roumania – a study (Carmen Sylva) (1891), the novel Hazel Fane (1891), Familiar faces – Victorien Sardou: poet, author, and member of the Academy of France; a personal study (1892), and A Riviera Romance (1899).