What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is every night?
A widow.
Bronchial-asthma is a big B. I've suffered with it most of my life. Funny, I know, being an opera singer with severe asthma. Just shows I wasn't about to let it keep me from doing what I loved. But today it did me in (complications of pneumonia and asthma) for good, leaving my wife a widow. We had 40 wonderful years together. She survived well enough without me for another 18 years. Women always did tend to get along just fine without men. My Lina was a lovely and devoted woman. She stuck by me through thick and thin. I couldn't have been more blessed.
We had 4 children: Louisa (who died last year), Michael Jr. (who will die in 1915), Victoire (who survives me by a year), and Edward (who died in infancy).
These are my daughers, Louisa and Victoire.
I was working on another opera, too, and almost got it completed before I bit the dust. It is called The Knight of the Leopard. I based it on the novel, The Talisman, by Sir Walter Scott. I was a composer to the very end, just like many of the other great ones. A friend of mine, Michael Costa, completed it for me. Giuseppe Zaffira was charged with providing it's libretto (the text used in an opera), which he did in Italian, and it opened in London in 1874 under the name of Il Talismano. I like my name for it much better. ;)
(Source: Walsh, B. (2000). Michael William Balfe: Opera singer and composer. Retrieved March 2014, from http://www.britishandirishworld.com)
(Source: Walsh, B., & Bonynge, R. (2008). Michael W. Balfe: A unique Victorian composer. Dublin, Ireland: Irish Academic Press.)