Giovanni Belletti

He showed interest in music at an early age, and his father, being advised to cultivate his son's talent, placed him in the hands of a teacher in the neighbourhood.

Advised to try the stage, he hesitated for some time, until he met at Carrara the Swedish sculptor Johan Niclas Byström, who proposed to take him to Stockholm, free from all risk or expense, to lodge in his house, and make his debut; and, if unsuccessful, to send him back on the same terms to Italy.

Early the next year he appeared in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, achieving his first success about a month earlier than Jenny Lind, with whose career he was so much connected afterwards.

[2] When Jenny Lind left Stockholm for Paris, Belletti returned to Italy; but when she came to London, the opera manager Benjamin Lumley, upon her advice, persuaded him to come to sing with her again.

He afterwards retired, without a sign of faded powers, to Sarzana, his native place, where he lived a life of seclusion, universally respected, and surrounded by his family and relations.