If nothing were wanting in courage, natural gifts of voice, and intellectual power on the part of the child, as regards the height of her person there was a mancamento of several inches. As the French proverb says, "le temps corrige cela;" but, in the meantime, the stage-manager, a learned Hellenist, was not oblivious of the means by which the Greeks gave altitudes to their scenic heroes and heroines, and the little prima donna, to whom was assigned for her début the part of the heroine in a translation of the favorite French opera, Jean de Paris, was supplied with enormous cork heels. There was a time, at the court of Louis XV., when an inch and a half of red heel was the distinctive characteristic of a marquis, or of a lady of sufficient quality to be allowed to sit in the presence of royalty. On the occasion of the début of Henriette Sontag, four inches of vermillion-colored cork foreshadowed the rank of the little lady, destined to become one of the most absolute mimic queens of the lyrical world, and afterwards a real and much respected countess. When the singer who enacted the pompous seneschal in the opera of Jean de Paris came forward, and announced, "It is no less a personage than the Princess of Navarre whose arrival I announce!" the applause and laughter were universal. When the little prodigy appeared on her cork pedestal, the house was filled with cheers and acclamations. As the business of the stage proceeded, the auditors found that there was no longer any indulgence necessary on the score of age, but that there were claims on their admiration for a voice which, for its purity, its peculiar flute-like tone, and its agility, has never been surpassed. The celebrated tenor, Gerstener, who enacted Jean de Paris, that night sang better than ever, finding that he had to cope with the attraction of a new melodic power. Many nights successively did she thus sing the Princess of Navarre with increasing success to crowded houses. Her next part was one far more difficult—that of the heroine in Paer's fine opera, Sargin.
The capital of Bohemia was not destined long to retain its chief ornament. Long before the conclusion of the season, the Imperial Court had heard of her extraordinary success, and Henriette Sontag was summoned to Vienna, where she appeared, the very next season, at the German Opera.
In our times we have "Kings of Railways" and "Colossuses of Roads," indebted to good luck for their success. At the time Henriette Sontag debutted at Vienna there existed in Italy also millionaire Impresarii, only indebted for pre-eminence to the favors of chance. That curious original, Barbaja, the lessee at the same time of the largest German and Italian Theatres, was born under the luckiest of stars. Since his day, his successors in Italy, having found talent becoming daily rarer, have watched every young talent as it rose, taken possession of it, and worked them until the death of their voices, before they had a chance of the maturation of their powers, in singing operas of composers, who strive to conceal their sterility under noise and exaggerations both dramatic and instrumental. In our days, to be a successful lessee, you must be possessed of indefatigable genius, as well as industry; Barbaja, on the contrary, found musical genius of all kinds at his command to speculate upon. Not only were there Catalanis, Pastas, Malibrans, Garcias, Donzellis, Rubinis, Lablaches, &c., in ample number, but all the operas that Paër, Winter, Paesiello, Cimarosa, and Mozart had written, were fresh in the lyrical répertoire, and composers of equal merit were living, and could be monopolized for money. In the Villa Barbaja, the palace the fortunate impresario had built for himself on the Possilipo, at Naples, you may, half way up the hill, on the third story, see the room where, in the dog-days, Rossini wrote his Otello, standing at a desk, in the costume of terrestrial paradise, with a Chucharro boy fanning him behind with the back torn from a large music-book. When managers had such slaves responding to their behests, like the genius to the lamp of Aladdin, they might easily live and rule like sultans, with a Mahomet's paradise upon earth. Thus it was with Barbaja. With the assistance of the great alchymist Rossini, who turned so readily "notes into gold," he thought he knew and mostly had secured all the talent available to his theatre that existed in Europe. In those days not only a northern cantatrice was not dreamt of, but it was thought that the South alone could produce a great singer for the Italian lyrical stage.
When he arrived at Vienna, such was, however, the report of the fame of young Sontag, that the great sybarite of the day condescended at last to visit the German opera, even at the sacrifice of having his ears, accustomed to the melodious "lingua Toscana," torn by the guttural discordance of the Teutonic tongue. On hearing Henriette Sontag sing, Barbaja was overcome with astonishment. To this feeling succeeded dismay, when, having immediately applied to her parents, he found in them a polite but most unquestionable abhorrence for the Italian stage, which they were afraid would lead their daughter to the land of moral laxity, of Cicisbei and Patiti, of
"Pasteboard triumph, and the cavalcade,
Processions formed for piety and love,
A mistress and a saint in every grove."
In vain he tempted them with an El Dorado in perspective—the conscientious Germans would not concede, at first, a single iota of his wishes. The world, to whom she has imparted so much pure enjoyment,—and, fortunately, will now impart so much more in time to come—was near never hearing the great vocalist sing in an euphonious language, in that which made her fame universal, and led her to visit England and France.
At last, however, after repeated efforts, some concession was made, although Barbaja's fate was like that of the hero of the classical poet—the gods vouchsafed but half his prayer. Henriette Sontag was allowed to appear at the Italian Opera at Vienna. But she alone, of all the great singers of those days, never visited Italy. Many an evening the good-natured Neapolitan Impresario, a still greater epicure in gastronomy than in music, after enjoying a dinner such as Lucullus was wont to degustate nearly on the same spot, as he walked on his Palace terrace and looked down across the inlet to San Carlo, would grow moody when he thought of what he lost by the rooted aversion of Sontag's parents; and then he would anathematize the Maledetti Tedeschi, the born enemies of his country, with an energy, if not with a poetry, worthy of the patriotic Filicaja—for they, like all the other invaders of Italy, "never gave her anything but blows and slavery, and always took away everything they could, not leaving even an Iron Crown, or a funeral urn to preserve the ashes of past greatness."
The important change for the musical world at large was, however, effected. The next season Henriette Sontag was engaged to sing in Italian at Vienna, and removed to the Carinthia, having for her colleagues vocalists of such a calibre, that one of them, "il buon Rubini," has never been surpassed; whilst all those who have enjoyed the talents of the other, Lablache, feel that not only he has never been, but cannot imagine that he ever will be equalled.
Amongst the company at the Carinthia, there was another exquisite artist, who was destined, as a model of style, to exert a great influence on the career of Sontag, who has now risen so much higher in the world's estimation than her fair predecessor has ever attained, eminent as she was. As soon as the young Sontag, the most conscientious of artists (no slight portion of her success being due to her severity of judgment on herself), had heard Madame Fodor, a new light broke upon her; with tears in her eyes she threw her arms round her mother's neck, conjured her to take her home, and give her a piano. Her wish accomplished, she sat at her piano, working night and day at improving herself, and never leaving her home but when there was a rehearsal for Fodor, when she would hide herself in a corner of the house, and her ears would drink up with enthusiasm every note that dropped from the great prima donna, who has left a memory still enduring with the old habitués of Her Majesty's Theatre. Madame Fodor, on the other hand, hearing the young inexperienced prima donna sing for the first time, exclaimed, "Had I her voice, I should hold the whole world at my feet!"
The Prussian dilettanti employed every means to bring Henriette Sontag to their capital. At the end of the Italian Opera season at Vienna, she was persuaded to come to Berlin, to support by her attraction the Kœnigstadt Theatre, just opened. There she was joined by distinguished German lyrists, such as Jäger, Wächter, Sager, and Spitzeder. She was obliged to sing the translations of the operas of Rossini and of the French répertoire, then all the fashion at Berlin. Her success, however, was immense. Every seat in the house was taken, in anticipation, long before the days of performance; and we remember well, being there at the time, that the foreigners of rank who arrived in Berlin, finding it impossible to purchase a seat at any price, were obliged to apply to Count de Bruhl, the minister of the "Menus plaisirs du roi," to obtain an obscure seat at the back of the Court, or of the diplomatic box.