In demeanor
she was artless, unaffected and ladylike. Romantic stories were
continually in circulation regarding suitors for her hand. As the wife
of Count Rossi, an attache of the Sardinian legation, she retired to
private life in 1830, and passed many happy years with her husband in
various capitols of Europe. When, in 1848, owing to financial shipwreck,
she returned to the stage her voice still charmed by its exquisite
purity, spirituelle quality and supreme finish. In 1852 she came to
America and created an immense furore in the musical and fashionable
world. She died of cholera in Mexico in 1854.
Born the same year as Madame Sontag was Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient,
one of the world's noblest interpreters of German opera and German
Lieder, although surpassed by others in vocal resources. She grew up on
the stage, and was trained by her father, Friedrich Schroeder, a baritone
singer, and her mother, Sophie Schroeder, known as the "Siddons of
Germany." Her dramatic soprano was capable of producing the most tender,
powerful, truthful and intensely thrilling effects, although it was not
specially tractable and was at times even harsh.
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