From 1841 Mario and Grisi lived together. The acclaim that Mario received in Italian opera surpassed the renown that he had won in French opera, and he soon acquired a Europe-wide reputation for the beauty of his singing and the elegance of his bearing. He possessed a handsome face and a lithe figure; he liked to show off his legs in tights. His lyrical voice, though less dazzling than that of the older virtuoso tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini and not as powerful as that of his younger rival Enrico Tamberlik, was described as having grace and a beguiling, velvety softness that made it unique. The music critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw, who was born in 1856 and therefore could not have heard Mario in his prime, remarked that Mario's singing featured a marked vibrato.