Malibran was born Felicia Garcia, one of a famous Spanish family of singers and musicians. Her father was Manuel Garcia, a tenor, composer and teacher, three of whose children became professional singers.
Having studied with her father, Malibran made her first stage appearance in Naples, at the age of five. Her operatic début was in London, at the King's Theatre, where she sang Rosina in Rossini's Barber of Seville, in 1825.
In the same year she traveled to New York with her father's Italian opera company, which included her sister, brother and stepmother. There she sang in Mozart and Rossini works, notably the first American performance of Don Giovanni, which had Da Ponte in the audience.
While in New York, she married Francois Malibran, but the couple soon separated. Returning to Europe, she became immediately successful, singing in London, Milan, Rome, Naples, Paris and Bologna. She was a contralto who also reached a soprano register. Between the two was an interval of dead notes which her remarkable technique enabled her to conceal. She had great presence and dramatic ability and was famous for her interpretation of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda and Rossini's Desdemona.
In 1836 she made a second, happier marriage. Her husband, the Belgian violinist, De Beriot, was so devoted that after her death he had a statue erected over her tomb. It shows her in the r├┤le of Norma, in Bellini's opera of the same name, a portrayal for which she was renowned.
Malibran's death resulted from injuries received while horseback riding in 1836. After an accident in May she concealed her physical state and insisted on fulfilling her singing engagements in Manchester, England, in September. She died there at the end of the month in considerable pain. Her tomb is in Laeken, Belgium.
