He came to be valued for works in an academic style which prefigured his 1841 plaster bas-relief La mort de Démosthène (now at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts), or La Villanelle, exhibited at the Salon of 1848 and remarked upon by Théophile Gautier, who described it as
Dell'Acqua's song "Villanelle" for coloratura soprano has been widely performed and recorded, and has appeared on film soundtracks including Get Hep to Love (1942) and I Married an Angel (1942).
In 1919 she recorded three songs for the Broome Special Phonograph label, including "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and "Villanelle".