could be found casually singing with Queen Margherita of Italy, herself an artist and a great lover of music. After Mario's death, his legacy was kept alive by a fund for opera singing education in his honor and name. A benefit concert was staged for Mario in London in 1878, and collections reached £4,000, which provided a pension for the singer. He died in Rome in 1883 and was buried in his home town, Cagliari, in 1884. His fortune and the De Candia ancestral seat During his singing career, Mario and Grisi both accumulated a significant fortune, particularly at their assignments at the Mariinsky Theatre where the Tsar used to pay them in gold coins. During their extensive tours in France and England they were paid handsomely in the currency of the time. They had also accumulated a great deal of jewelry—diamonds and other precious stones—as gifts from admiring kings and queens of Europe. Their joint fortune was estimated to be over 600 gold-bars, equivalent to 12 million US dollars in today's currency. They owned a home near L'Opéra in Paris, a mansion in Fulham, London, and the Villa Salviatino near Florence, as well as a cottage for Mario's mother in Cagliari. Mario's finances were entrusted to the Rothschild & Cie Banque in Paris, France, and eventually transferred to N M Rothschild & Sons in London, England. Unfortunately, by the end of his life, he had spent most of the funds in his daughters' dowries, and he had used the remaining funds to partially self-finance his last tour of the Americas. Nevertheless, he maintained a large art collection that he had accumulated together with Grisi. He put these works up in an estate sale in London before he relocated to Italy. Most of his art collection and the other contents of the estate sale were acquired by the British family of the fiancé of his daughter Rita following her death. Most of the paintings he acquired with Grisi remain in the private collection of Sir John Aird, Bart. In 1847 Mario bought a house in Sardinia, where his mother lived with his brother Carlo until he got married. The property is situated in Cagliari Old Town (Castello), in Contrada S. Caterina 1 (now via Canelles). After his death, the house passed down to his daughters. This house is now a part of a nuns' convent. The main family house, called