After many years of undimmed happiness and prosperity, changes take place, and by one of those extraordinary freaks of fortune by which the highest and the lowest reverse their positions, we find the Countess Rossi—the Sontag of our youth—compelled to have recourse to that profession of which she had been so immaculate an ornament, to retrieve a broken fortune and re-erect the altars of her home. No false scruples troubled her; she had a duty to perform, and she set herself with bold and hopeful spirit to the work. How entirely she has succeeded, her career for the two past years bears witness. A few more years of labor and her noble exertions will have procured for her a second large fortune.
And how has time worked upon Sontag? To our mind it has but matured her glorious powers, and added to her loveliness a charm, which is doubled by our interest in and our sympathy for her present position.
Her voice has still that exquisite purity and spirituelle quality which make it a perfect luxury to listen. We have heard louder voices, but never one that fell so soothingly upon the heart—nor one that left us so perfectly satisfied while longing eagerly for more. She was always a thorough and conscientious artiste, and she has not changed. To describe her powers minutely would occupy too much space, but they are all summed up in one short sentence. Sontag sings!
HOW SONTAG SINGS.
BY
HECTOR BERLIOZ.
IN these days, when music has become one of the necessities of civilized life, each party and each clique has its own particular favorite, and denies even common justice to those artists, who are not members of that camaraderie which Mr. Scribe has so cleverly portrayed in his witty play. In that respect Madame Sontag has been extremely fortunate; criticism has handled her more tenderly, and she had to suffer less than any other singer from the venom of party spirit, from the simple reason, that she united all the qualities—although not in an equal degree—all like to find in an artist: sweetness never surpassed, agility almost fabulous, expression, and the most perfect intonation. On she carols, higher and higher, like a lark at "heaven's gate," so soft, so clear, so wonderfully distinct that, like the silver bell from the altar, it is heard through the pealing organ. But her principal merit, in our eyes, is the absence of 'rant'—the substitute of genius—in any shape whatever. She always SINGS, and does not depend on mere strength of lungs—erroneously called "power." She never strains her delicate organ—that sweet instrument so susceptible of every shade of expression. How fortunate for our young singers that, like the nuns in Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable, she left the tomb of the seven ancestors, bestowed by the King of Prussia upon the Countess de Rossi, to teach them the wide difference between singing and screaming, and to show how we all, during the last ten years, have been listening to and adoring false prophets.
THE
PRIMA DONNA AND THE COUNTESS.
OF all the artists there is none who so appeals to our hearts and our imaginations as Henriette Sontag. Her romantic history, her recent and great misfortunes, her far-famed beauty, her supreme talent, and her untarnished reputation, make her certainly one of the most remarkable women of the present century. Madame Sontag has had, as it were, two lives; twice she has achieved—what so few are ever destined to achieve at all—fame and fortune. When a mere girl, at eighteen, when others of her age are just entering on the world and existence, Henriette Sontag had already acquired European fame, seen the noblest and richest of many lands at her feet, refused even a royal hand offered for her acceptance, and, true to woman's nature, bestowed herself and her fortune (already considerable) where she had given her heart. The Count Rossi, one of the attachés of the Sardinian embassy, in every way merited this preference, and many years of uninterrupted happiness, during which time he became the representative of Sardinia at various courts, giving to the prima donna the rank of Ambassadress, which was never more gracefully filled, have justified her choice. What Henriette Sontag was when she first appeared, cannot be better described than by an extract from a work of Travels to St. Petersburg, by the celebrated Dr. Granville, which, at the time, was translated into French and German, and extracted into all the public papers. Dr. Granville, an Italian by birth, and an accomplished musician, was in every way qualified to judge of a musical talent, and time has proved the correctness of his criticism.
"* * * The orchestra (such an orchestra, composed of premiers talens all playing as one) began the overture to Winter's 'Interrupted Sacrifice,' Das Unterbrechene-Orperfest, and even though waiting in feverish excitement for the appearance of that wonderful girl (for she is no more) all had come to see, it was impossible not to be carried away by the exquisite manner in which this orchestra (perhaps the finest in the world) executed this fine composition. At length Mirrha entered; the star, the comet, the attraction, the Henriette Sontag, of whom sonnet-writers, poets, newspaper compilers, prose composers, travellers, had raved so much, stood before us. She is slender, rather petite and mignonne. Her countenance, like that of Canova's nymphs, belongs more to the ideal than to mortal reality. I should say that her hands are the prettiest things I ever saw, if her feet were not prettier still. She is faultless as to teeth, which the sweetest smile, for ever playing round her mouth, sets off at every warble in all their glory. Her chevelure, between auburn and blonde, is magnificent; and, to conclude with the essential part, the quality of her voice is beyond measure pleasing, and she possesses remarkable facility. M'lle Sontag's voice is a soprano of a sonorous, sweet, and clear timbre. She can reach the E above the lines without screaming. The flexibility of her organ has seduced her into that peculiar style of singing, which made Madame Catalani, for some few years, the musical wonder of Europe. It is this quality of voice, united to the personal gifts so profusely lavished by nature on one of her favorite daughters, that brought M'lle Sontag forward as a miracle, on the German stage, and at once, and without any premonitory step, made her a prima donna at the age of sixteen. But the first station at the opera cannot be had on such easy terms. The time necessary for acquiring declamation, expression, and pathos, has been spent by this prodigy in receiving unbounded applause for this one dazzling gift of nature, a flexible and brilliant voice, rendered irresistible by great personal beauty. The part of Mirrha is suited to Henriette Sontag in all but the last two scenes, where she is required to represent acute feeling and distress of mind. Her unalterably sweet and girlish face is ever the same, and the extent of the expression of her large, beautiful blue eyes consists in lowering them with the bashfulness of one of Carlo Dolce's madonnas, or raising them with the tenderness of a Cleopatra. The part of Rosina, in the Barbière, is one which exquisitely suits both the voice and person of M'lle Sontag. Never was there so fascinating a Rosina.