The most sophisticated

Maccarthy tells us of “a more professional scene-maker” who also shared a bed with Lord Byron (it is speculated that he slept with 200 women during his Venetian period). She was an opera singer and had the sophisticated name of Arpalice Taruscelli. “She is the most beautiful bacchante in the world and a woman to perish in,” the poet wrote in a letter. In addition to Byron, “Taruscelli already had a complicated retinue of lovers, ex-lovers, and an official cavaliere servente , a colonel in the Austrian army.”