HENRIETTA SONTAG.
The Greatest German Singer of the Century.—Her Characteristics as an Artist.—Her Childhood and Early Training.—Her Early Appearances in Weimar, Berlin, and Leipsic,—She becomes the Idol of the Public.—Her Charms as a Woman and Romantic Incidents of her Youth.—Becomes affianced to Count Rossi.—Prejudice against her in Paris, and her Victory over the Public Hostility.—She becomes the Pet of Aristocratic Salons.—Rivalry with Malibran.—Her Début in London, where she is welcomed with Great Enthusiasm.—Returns to Paris.—Anecdotes of her Career in the French Capital.—She becomes reconciled with Malibran in London.—Her Secret Marriage with Count Rossi.—She retires from the Stage as the Wife of an Ambassador.—Return to her Profession after Eighteen Years of Absence.—The Wonderful Success of her Youth renewed.—Her American Tour,—Attacked with Cholera in Mexico and dies.
I.
The career of Henrietta Sontag, born at Cob-lenz on the Rhine in 1805, the child of actors, was so picturesque in its chances and changes that had she not been a beautiful and fascinating woman and the greatest German singer of the century, the vicissitudes of her life would have furnished rich material for a romance. Nature gave her a pure soprano voice of rare and delicate quality united with incomparable sweetness. Essentially a singer and not a declamatory artist, the sentiment of grace was carried to such a height in her art, that it became equivalent to the more robust passion and force which distinguished some of her great contemporaries. As years perfected her excellence into its mellow prime, emotion and warmth animated her art work. But at the outset Mile. Sontag did little more than look lovely and pour forth such a flood of silvery and delicious notes, that the Italians called her the "nightingale of the North." The fanatical enthusiasm of the German youth ran into wild excesses, and we hear of a party of university students drinking her health at a joyous supper in champagne out of one of her satin shoes stolen for the purpose.
When Mile. Sontag commenced her brilliant career the taste of operatic amateurs was excessively fastidious. Nearly all outside of Germany shared Frederick the Great's prejudice against German singers. Yet when she appeared in Paris, in spite of hostile anticipation, in spite of her reserve, timidity, and coldness on the histrionic side of her art, she soon made good her place by the side of such remarkable artists as Mme. Pasta and Maria Malibran. She never transformed herself into an impassioned tragedienne, but through the spell of great personal attraction, of an exquisite voice, and of exceptional sensibility, taste, and propriety in her art methods, she advanced herself to a high place in public favor.
Her parents designed Henrietta for their own profession, and in her eighth year her voice had acquired such steadiness that she sang minor parts at the theatre. A distinguished traveler relates having heard her sing the grand aria of the Queen of the Night in the "Zauberflote" at this age, "her arms hanging beside her and her eye following the flight of a butterfly, while her voice, pure, penetrating, and of angelic tone, flowed as unconsciously as a limpid rill from the mountain-side." The year after this Henrietta lost her father, and she went to Prague with her mother, where she played children's parts under Weber, then chef d'orchestre. When she had attained the proper age she was admitted to the Prague Conservatory, and spent four years studying vocalization, the piano, and the elements of harmony. An accident gave the young singer the chance for a début in the sudden illness of the prima donna, who was cast to sing the part of the Princesse de Navarre in Boïeldieu's "Jean de Paris." The little vocalist of fifteen had to wear heels four inches high, but she sang none the less well, and the audience seemed to feel that they had heard a prodigy. She also took the part of the heroine in Paer's opera of "Sargino," and her brilliant success decided her career, as she was invited to take a position in the Viennese Opera. Here she met the brilliant Mme. Fodor, then singing an engagement in the Austrian capital. So great was this distinguished singer's admiration of the young girl's talents that she said, "Had I her voice I should hold the whole world at my feet."
Mlle. Sontag had the advantage at this period of singing with great artists who took much interest in her career and gave her valuable hints and help. Singing alternately in German and English opera, and always an ardent student of music, she learned to unite all the brilliancy of the Italian style and method to the solidity of the German school. The beautiful young cantatrice was beset with ardent admirers, not the least important being the English Ambassador Earl Clan William. He followed her to theatre, to convents, church, and seemed like her shadow. Sontag in German means Sunday; so the Viennese wits, then as now as wicked and satirical as those of Paris, nicknamed the nobleman Earl Montag, as Monday always follows Sunday. It was during this Vienna engagement that Weber wrote the opera of "Euryanthe," and designed the principal part for Sontag. But the public failed to fancy it, and called it "L'Ennuyante." The serious part of her art life commenced at Leipsic in 1824, where she interpreted the "Freischutz" and "Euryanthe," then in the flush of newness, and made a reputation that passed the bounds of Germany, though foreign critics discredited the reports of her excellence till they heard her.
"Henrietta's voice was a pure soprano, reaching perhaps from A or B to D in alt, and, though uniform in its quality, it was a little reedy in the lower notes, but its flexibility was marvelous: in the high octave, from F to C in alt, her notes rang out like the tones of a silver bell. The clearness of her notes, the precision of her intonation, the fertility of her invention, and the facility of her execution, were displayed in brilliant flights and lavish fioriture; her rare flexibility being a natural gift, cultivated by taste and incessant study. It was to the example of Mme. Fodor that Mile. Sontag was indebted for the blooming of those dormant qualities which had till then remained undeveloped. The ease with which she sang was perfectly captivating; and the neatness and elegance of her enunciation combined with the sweetness and brilliancy of her voice and her perfect intonation to render her execution faultless, and its effect ravishing. She appeared to sing with the volubility of a bird, and to experience the pleasure she imparted." To use the language of a critic of that day: "All passages are alike to her, but she has appropriated some that were hitherto believed to belong to instruments—to the piano-forte and the violin, for instance. Arpeggios and chromatic scales, passages ascending and descending, she executed in the same manner that the ablest performers on these instruments execute them. There were the firmness and the neatness that appertain to the piano-forte, while she would go through a scale staccato with the precision of the bow. Her great art, however, lay in rendering whatever she did pleasing. The ear was never disturbed by a harsh note. The velocity of her passages was sometimes uncontrollable, for it has been observed that in a division, say, of four groups of quadruplets, she would execute the first in exact time, the second and third would increase in rapidity so much that in the fourth she was compelled to decrease the speed perceptibly, in order to give the band the means of recovering the time she had gained."
Mile. Sontag was of middle height, beautifully formed, and had a face beaming with sensibility, delicacy, and modesty. Beautiful light-brown hair, large blue eyes, finely molded mouth, and perfect teeth completed an ensemble little short of bewitching. Her elegant figure and the delicacy of her features were matched by hands and feet of such exquisite proportions that sculptors besought the privilege of modeling them, and poets raved about them in their verses. Artlessness and naivete were joined with such fine breeding of manner that it seemed as if the blue blood of centuries must have coursed in her veins instead of the blood of obscure actors, whose only honor was to have given to the world one of the paragons of song. Sontag never aspired to the higher walks of lyric tragedy, as she knew her own limitation, but in light and elegant comedy, the Mosinas and Susannas, she has never been excelled, whether as actress or singer. It was said of her that she could render with equal skill the works of Rossini, Mozart, Weber, and Spohr, uniting the originality of her own people with the artistic method and facility of the French and Italian schools. From Leipsic Mile. Sontag went to Berlin, where the demonstrations of delight which greeted her singing rose to fever-heat as the performances continued. Expressions of rapture greeted heron the streets; even the rigid etiquette of the Prussian court gave way to receive the low-born singer as a royal guest, an honor which all the aristocratic houses were prompt to emulate. It was at Berlin that Sontag made the acquaintance of Count Rossi, a Piedmontese nobleman attached to the Sardinian Legation. An ardent attachment sprang up between them, and they became affianced.