SOUVENIRS OF THE OPERA IN EUROPE. BY JULIE DE MARGUERITTES. C H A P. I.

THE opera was Cenerentola; the overture, chorus, introduction, &c., all were impatiently listened to. At length the scene opened and revealed Cenerentola by her kitchen fire. She lays down her bellows, she advances; even in that assemblage of beauty she was the most beautiful. Her dress is simply a grey merino with a black velvet ribbon round the waist. She is exactly the height of the Medicean Venus, what the moderns call the middle height: her figure, though slight, has the full proportion of womanhood: her skin glows with the soft tint of the China rose; her arms and hands are faultless; her ankle, revealed by the short petticoat, that of the "Danatrice;" the foot, one for which the glass slipper would be too large. Who can describe her face? the soft, pouting lips of infancy, the delicate features, the large melting blue eye, the finely turned oval face, enshrined in a cloud of golden curls. So lovely was she that the audience appeared to forget that she was to do anything more than allow herself to be looked at. But she comes towards the footlights with the modest self-possession of an innocent child. "Una olta c'era un rè," first reveals the sweet tone of her voice. From the first note to the last it is unmistakably a soprano. Her execution, as she advanced into the difficulties of the music, was perfectly supernatural; it resembled an instrument—no bird—but it was the perfection of the loveliest of all instruments, the human voice. With the purity of a silver bell, she reached to the E above the lines; it was perfectly equal, both in the upper and middle registers; it was sweet, soft, and expressive in all its tones. When the public recovered from the first effect, they were obliged to acknowledge that it was wonderful, pleasing, and charming, like the fair creature before them, moving gracefully through her part as she would have done in a drawing-room. Cencrentola (like the Barbière) is an opera which is sung by sopranos and by contraltos; it was originally written for Emilia Bonini, a contralto, who quietly made her fortune in Italy, unknown to Parisian or Londonian fame. It bears transposition without injury, though it contains great difficulties of execution. Madame Albertazzi, an English woman of great beauty, who acquired great celebrity and died very young, was the first who ventured to appear in it after Sontag.

The enthusiasm for Sontag increased every night. Her gentle, unassuming manners, her youth—she was but twenty, and looked eighteen—her surprising beauty, the maidenly reserve of her conduct, brought to her feet the homage of all London; the princess's robe was more than once offered her for acceptance; a royal widower, allied with the English throne, though a countryman of her own and now a king, offered his hand at the risk of immense sacrifices; but she was never coquettish—never prudish—never vain, and never swerved from her allegiance to the one whose name she now bears, and to whom she was secretly engaged before coming to England. She went everywhere with her merry little sister, and her stately dame de compagnie; stepped from the stage to the saloons of Devonshire House, where, amongst the most courted and honored guests, she waltzed with the joyousness of a German girl; but none ever presumed to pollute her ear with an impure word. There was at this time in London another remarkable cantatrice, the most wonderful contralto who had ever been heard since the days of Banti, of whom none but Italians ever heard, and whom they have now forgotten. Her style and voice were considered without equal; but nature had disdained to complete her work. Pisaroni was little, crooked, awkward, and united in her features and complexion every species of ugliness—but all this was forgotten when from that large ungraceful mouth issued low mellifluous notes producing on her hearers the thrilling effect of a sudden burst from an organ in a still moonlight cathedral. At one morning concert, at the close of the season, Pisaroni, Malibran, and Sontag sang the trio (from Meyerbeer's Crociato) "Giovinetto cavalier;" and never was such music heard since.