Malibran was known for her stormy personality and dramatic intensity, becoming a legendary figure after her death in Manchester, England, at age 28.

Her father Manuel García was a celebrated tenor much admired by Rossini, having created the role of Count Almaviva in his The Barber of Seville.

When prima donna Giuditta Pasta became indisposed, García suggested that his daughter take over in the role of Rosina in The Barber of Seville.

The troupe consisted primarily of the members of his family: Maria, her brother, Manuel, and their mother, Joaquina Sitches, also called "la Briones".

It is thought that her father forced Maria to marry him in return for the banker's promise to give Manuel García 100,000 francs.

The Library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels conserves a series of interesting coloured costume projects[2] for this play, created by Malibran, revealing her unsuspected drawing talent.

The pair lived together as a common-law couple for six years and a child was born to them in 1833 (the piano pedagogue Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot), before Maria obtained an annulment of her marriage to Malibran.

In September 1836 she was in Manchester participating in a music festival at the collegiate church and Theatre Royal on Fountain Street.

Her body was temporarily buried in the church after a public funeral before being moved to a mausoleum in Laeken Cemetery, near Brussels in Belgium.

[8] Malibran enjoyed great success in Bellini's operas Norma, La sonnambula and I Capuleti e i Montecchi (as Romeo).

Bellini wrote a new version of his I puritani to adapt it to her mezzo-soprano voice and even promised to write a new opera especially for her, but he died before he was able to do so.

[...] Vivacity, accuracy, ascending chromatics runs, arpeggios, vocal lines dazzling with strength, grace or coquetry, she possessed all that the art can acquire.

The Library of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels possesses an important collection of scores, documents and objects from the diva, assembled in the Maria Malibran fund.