PALMIERI, Maria (ALFIERI, Maria) [CROFT, Mary Anne] (b Mount Row, Lambeth, London, 23 May 1835; d Milton Chambers, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, 23 August 1890)

This chapter presents a biography of mid- to late-19th-century singer Mary Ann Croft. She was born in Lambeth in 1835 to Robert Potter Croft and his wife Ann Matilda, née Smith. Mary Ann Croft, who called herself Signora Alfieri until she, too, married her leading man and became Signora Maria Palmieri. The career of Madame Palmieri became a cavalcade from one Italian theatre to another. In April 1864 she can be seen at the Carlo Felice, Genoa, where she and Tito scored a hit in the very I Lombardi which hadn't been so liked in Milan, then at Reggio. In August Maria can be seen singing Amelia in Un ballo in maschera at Macerata, with Perizzi and Cresci and, for autumn, at the Teatro Vittorio Emmanuele in Turin, where she shared the top of the bills with Emmy Lagrua. Madame Palmieri the prima donna was a new singer to Boston and, indeed, to the whole of America except California.