Pauline Viardot, who at that time lived in a chateau near Brussels, happened to hear Cabel sing as a child and predicted a great future for her.

[2] Cabel first studied voice in Liège with Bouillon,[3] and, her father having died, gave music lessons to help support her mother.

[9] Seveste engaged her for the 1853–1854 season at his theatre, where she made her debut creating the role of Toinon in Adolphe Adam's Le bijou perdu on 6 October 1853.

Fétis described her as "young, fresh, winsome, cheerful, having the devil of a body, lacking at the time taste and musical style, but blessed with an adorable voice, of a marvelous purity, whose brilliant and silvery timbre produced an amazing effect on the public, with which she launched the most difficult lines with amazing confidence and assurance…"[10] Georges Bousquet, writing in the Revue et Gazette Musicale of 9 October 1853, reported that the hit of the show was Cabel's performance of the aria "Ah!

[11] She became such a popular star that the company, located in the working class district of the Boulevard du Temple, began to attract a well-heeled audience, including Emperor Napoleon III and his new bride Eugénie de Montijo.

[9] Cabel continued singing at the Théâtre Lyrique, creating the roles of Corbin in François-Auguste Gevaert's Georgette ou Le moulin de Fontneoy (28 November 1853) and Marie in Louis Clapisson's La promise (16 March 1854).

[12] The Musical World of 25 March 1854 suggested that "although not a work of the first class, it [La promise] will probably have a run, owing to the manner in which the principal part is sustained by Mlle Marie Cabel….

[14] Near the end of the season in May, Cabel was on leave and appeared in Bordeaux and Nantes, but was announced, and may have returned, for a benefit performance of La promise at the Théâtre Lyrique on 1 June.

The London company was not officially the Théâtre Lyrique, as Seveste had refused to take part and remained in France in order to prepare for the fall season in Paris.

The London contingent presented a two-month season at St James's, which opened with Cabel singing in Le bijou perdu.

This was one of the most finished and brilliant displays of bravura singing to which we have listened for a long time, and was a genuine triumph for Madame Cabel, who was ably supported by MM.

The opera premiered on 16 December 1854 with Cabel in the leading soprano role of Elvire, and although it is often considered to be one of Adam's weakest works, it turned out to be one of Perrin's more successful new productions at the theatre, receiving 54 performances that year and the next.

"[25] By the time of Jaguarita, however the same journal (30 November 1861) complained that "such perverted productions as these, in which the voice is treated as an instrument of brass or wood, intended to obey merely mechanical impulses rather than the grand and noble organ of human emotion, have ruined all the best singers whom France has recently produced, and by all who have any regard for pure art, ought to be energetically reprobated.

"[25] Walsh remarks that when Cabel had left the Théâtre Lyrique, she had been replaced by Caroline Miolan-Carvalho "who seems to have refined public taste in singing.

"[26] Later that season on 18 March 1862 Cabel appeared to great acclaim as Féline in the premiere of Albert Grisar's 3-act opera La chatte merveilleuse (with a libretto based on a vaudeville by Eugène Scribe).

[27] The following season Léon Carvalho returned as director, replacing Réty, and on 30 October 1862 the company moved to its new house on the Place du Châtelet.

This turned out to be Peines d'amour perdues, a reworking of Mozart's Così fan tutte in which Da Ponte's original libretto was replaced with one by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré which was based on Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost.

Le Ménestrel (8 February 1863) reported that their critic had been reassured by the company that Mozart's music would remain unaltered and his "work will not be disparaged by exchanging the glass beads of Da Ponte for a diamond of Shakespeare.

[31] After leaving the Théâtre Lyrique with Perrin to join the Opéra-Comique company at the end of 1855, Cabel's first creation was on 23 February 1856 in the title role of Daniel Auber's 3-act opera Manon Lescaut.

"[34] In the meantime, Cabel created the role of Sylvia in Ambroise Thomas' 3-act opéra-comique Le carnaval de Venise (first performed on 9 December 1857) in which she sang an elaborate vocalise.

[42] Cabel's other appearances at the Opéra-Comique included revivals of Auber's L'ambassadrice, Victor Massé's Galathée, and Thomas's Le songe d'une nuit d'été.

Eugène Ritt, the director of the Opéra-Comique from 1862 to 1870, later recalled: "Marie Cabel, who was playing Philine, asked Thomas to write her a grand aria in the garden scene.

The Musical World wrote of a performance later that season: "The other female part was intrusted to Madame Marie Cabel, long one of the most distinguished favourites of the Opéra-Comique school.

Madame Cabel is no longer young; but she is still a very handsome woman, retaining full possession of her powers, and her vocalization is marked by a grace and fluency which have been rarely equalled, and possibly never surpassed.

There would be something almost audacious in the fearlessness with which she dashes off her ascending scales and roulades, were it not for the ease and unconsciousness of difficulty with which she executes them; one scarcely knows which to admire most in her singing—its perfect finish or entire absence of effort.