Charles Said-Vassallo does not seem to know much about Adelaide Borghi Mamo about whom I have written a short biography in the book Encounters with Malta (2000), edited by P. Bianchi and P. Serracino Inglott.

Adelaide Borghi was not a soprano but a first-rate contralto who sang many contralto roles during the 1848/49 and 1850/51 opera seasons at the Royal Theatre, now the Manoel Theatre.

The great Dizionario biografico degli Italiani describes her husband as Manuel Magro, a Spanish tenor, whereas M.A. Borg, in his unpublished history of opera in Malta, says Mamo was Maltese and, in our own time, Alfred G. Miceli, in his L-istorja ta’ l-opra Maltija (1631-1866) (1999) says Mamo was a Michelino Magro, Maltese and a tenor with the Società Filarmonica di Malta, the first Maltese opera company founded in 1844.

Mamo, as far as I know, never made a name as a singer, unlike Adelaide who, after leaving Malta, ended up having a great career in Europe.

Mamo’s claim to our interest lies in his having fathered a girl who was to become at least as famous as her mother: Erminia Borghi Mamo, one of the most famous sopranos of her generation.