greatest German singer of the century.
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.

She began singing minor parts at the theatre at the early age of eight,
and her regular debut in opera took place when she was only fifteen.
"She appeared to sing," we are told, "with the volubility of a bird, and
to experience the pleasure she imparted." Her great art lay in rendering
pleasing whatever she did. The ear was never disturbed by a harsh note.

The most romantic stories circulated about the adoration lavished upon
her by men of rank and wealth, and it was reported that no singer ever
had so many offers of marriage from people of exalted station. But she
had met in Berlin a Piedmontese nobleman, Count Rossi, to whom she
became affianced, and Mlle. Sontag refused all the flattering overtures
made by her admirers. One of her most ardent lovers was De Beriot, the
great violinist, who, on his rejection, fell into a deep state of
despondency, from which the fascinations of the beautiful Malibran at
length roused him. Sontag's union with Rossi was for a long time kept
secret on account of the objections of his family, but she retired from
the stage and lived nearly twenty years of happy life in the various
capitals of Europe, to which her husband, attached to the Sardinian
legation, was accredited. At length, in 1848, her fortune was swept
away in the political revolution, and she announced her intention of
returning to the stage. She was at once offered L17,000 for the season
at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, and on her first appearance it was
evident that time had but developed the artist. What little her voice
had lost was more than compensated for by the deeper passion and feeling
which permeated her efforts, and she was rapturously greeted. In 1852
she made a tour of the large cities of the United States, where she
quickly established herself as one of the greatest favorites, in spite
of the fact that Malibran and Jenny Lind had preceded her, and that the
country had hardly recovered from the Lind mania. In New Orleans she
entered into an engagement to sing in the City of Mexico; but while her
agent was absent in Europe, gathering together