Rosina Carandini

Singers Rosina (1844–1932) and Fannie Carandini (d. 1904) were two of the five daughters of Jerome Carandini, Marquis of Sarzano (1803–1870), an Italian political exile, and his wife Marie (née Burgess, 1826–1894). Born in Hobart, Rosina and Fannie began their singing training early, their father’s straitened circumstances and their mother’s dominance and ambition determining that they would have careers on the musical stage. In November 1860, aged sixteen, Rosina married an accountant named Edward Palmer; they moved to Melbourne in 1866. Thereafter, in addition to raising a large family, Rosina performed with visiting artists and companies and with her sisters in Marie’s ‘Carandini Family Troupe’, which toured locally and overseas. Fannie married a military officer named Henry Morland in India in 1875 and eventually moved to England, where she died in 1904. Rosina worked as a music teacher in Melbourne for many years and on her death in 1932 was remembered as the leading Australian soprano of her era.