With respect to Madame Sontag's voice and talent, it is unnecessary to be diffuse. Few comprehend, and still fewer care for, the jargon of contrapuntal criticism, whether applied to a singer or an opera; and for those few, abundant food is continually supplied by _dilettanti_ more profound and scientific than ourselves. Purity, sweetness, flexibility, are the most prominent characteristics of Madame Sontag's voice; her execution is extraordinarily brilliant, correct and elegant, and supremely easy. No appearance of effort ever distresses her audience; the most difficult passages are achieved without the swelling of a vein, the strain of a muscle, or the slightest contortion of her agreeable countenance. Although excelling in those _tours-de-force_ which captivate the multitude, and skilled to decorate the composer's theme with an embroidery of sweet sounds as intricate as graceful, she also well knows how to captivate the true connoisseur by her exquisite taste and sobriety in rendering simple melodies, and such music as would be the worse for adornment. We commenced this paper with a determination to avoid comparisons, and we shall therefore make none: but assuredly Madame Sontag need fear none. In her own style she is quite unrivalled. That style we consider to be more particularly the genteel comedy of opera--a combination of sentiment with gaiety and grace. In her younger days she was considered less successful in more impassioned parts, but this is no longer the case. None who have witnessed her admirable personation of Amina, Linda, and Elvira, will tax her with want of soul and of dramatic energy; and we scarcely know whether to prefer her in those parts, or in the gayer ones of Rosina, Susanna, and Norina--which last character, peculiarly adapted to her arch and ladylike style of acting, she has made her own as completely as Lablache has identified himself with that of her elderly and disappointed wooer. To say the truth, when we first heard of Madame Sontag's expected return to the stage, it was with no pleasurable feeling. The reappearance of a singer after twenty years' absence can in few instances be other than a melancholy sight. It is mournful to listen to the efforts of a deteriorated voice that one has known in its melodious freshness. But an agreeable disappointment awaited all who ventured such unpleasant anticipations with respect to Madame Sontag. Her early campaign had been so short that she was yet in her vigorous prime when she returned, a veteran in fame but not in age or voice. Amidst various statements of her age, the most favourable give her forty-one years, whilst the least so add but two or three to that number. The subject is a delicate one, and we are too happy to give her the benefit of the doubt, which she is the more entitled to that neither on nor off the stage does she look even the least of the ages assigned to her. This would make her but three years older than Madame Grisi, who first saw the light, if theatrical records tell truth, in 1812, and in whose voice none, that we are aware of, have as yet pretended to discover a falling off. Whether twenty years of almost constant exercise, or the same period of comparative repose, be most favourable to the preservation of the singing faculties, we shall not decide. Madame Sontag, however, has never risked by disuse the rusting of her fine organ. At the different courts at which she resided, she invariably showed the utmost complaisance, and willingly contributed, for the pleasure of her friends--and, on occasion, for the purposes of charity--those treasures of song for which managers, before and since, have been glad to pay a prince's ransom. This season her voice is even fresher and more flexible than in 1849; and there can be no reason why the opera-loving public should not, for many years to come, applaud her as their chief favourite--unless, indeed, the very high rate of remuneration her talent commands should, by speedily realising her object in returning to the stage, induce her soon to quit it. We believe it is no secret that her present engagement secures her about fourteen thousand pounds for twelve months' performances--about thrice the salary of a secretary of state. The sum is a very satisfactory one; and, whatever the fortune Madame Sontag has lost, she has evidently at her disposal the means of rapidly amassing another of no mean amount. Who will give the odds that we do not again see her an ambassadress?