tional singer may continue to give pleasure
to her auditors, despite the fact that she has left middle age behind
her, by the mere lovely quality of the tone she produces.

In the history of opera there may be found the names of many singers
who have maintained their popularity and, indeed, a good deal of their
art, long past fifty, and there is recorded at least one instance in
which a singer, after a long absence from the theatre, returned to the
scene of her earlier triumphs with her powers unimpaired, even
augmented. I refer, of course, to Henrietta Sontag, born in 1805, who
retired from the stage of the King's Theatre in London in 1830 in her
twenty-fifth year and who returned twenty years later in 1849. She
had, in the meantime, become the Countess Rossi, but although she had
abandoned the stage her reappearance proved that she had not remained
idle during her period of retirement. For she was one of those artists
in whom early "inspiration" counted for little and "method" for much.
She was, indeed, a mistress of style. She came back to the public in
_Linda di Chaminoux_ and H. F. Chorley ("Thirty Years' Musical
Recollections") tells us that "all went wondrously well. No magic
could restore to her voice an upper note or two which Time had taken;
but the skill, grace, and precision with which she turned to account
every atom of power she still possessed,--the incomparable steadiness
with which she wrought out her composer's intentions--she carried
through the part, from first to last, without the slightest failure,
or sign of weariness--seemed a triumph. She was greeted--as she
deserved to be--as a beloved old friend come home again in the late
sunnier days.

"But it was not at the moment of Madame Sontag's reappearance that we
could advert to all the difficulty which added to the honour of its
success.--She came back under musical conditions entirely changed
since she left the stage--to an orchestra far stronger than that which
had supported her voice when it was younger; and to a new world of
operas.--Into this she ventured with an intrepid industry not to be
overpraised--with every new part enhancing the respect of every real
lover of music.--During the short period of these new performances at
Her Majesty's Theatre, which was not equivalent to two complete Opera
seasons, not merely did Madame Sontag go through the range of her old
characters--Susanna, Rosina, Desdemona, Donna Anna, and the like--but
she prese