Luisa Tetrazzini

“ PRACTISING IS it necessary to say that daily practice is indispensable to the student—as it is also to the finished artist? A celebrated violinist used to say, “If I cease practising for one day I know it when I next play; if for two days my enemies know it; if for three the public know it.” It is the same with the voice, although some voices, no doubt, require less daily exercising than others. ”

“ And in the same way how can one hope to give a satisfactory impersonation of a part in an opera except by studying carefully the drama as a whole, grasping the intentions of the author, making oneself acquainted with the period of the action, and generally entering into it and all the literary, dramatic, historical, and other details of the work as well as considering it from the purely musical point of view? ”

“ There is another reason, too, why it is a mistake, as a rule, to attempt the heavier rôles too soon—namely, the fact that the voice and the general physique, apart from the question of training and experience, are seldom ready for these at first. I have, indeed, known more than one case in which a career of promise has been ruined after a brilliant start by subjecting a young singer too soon to the heavy strain of the most important parts. ”

“ One singer will be great in opera, another in oratorio, a third in Lieder; but only in the rarest instances will you find one and the same artist excelling in all. Why is this? Simply because their respective requirements are so different.
For this reason the average artist will, I think, usually be well advised to confine himself to the class of work more particularly suited to his talent. While it is well to cultivate versatility so far as possible, it is a mistake to sing music of a kind for which you are not suited. Patti loved Wagner, for instance, and was a frequent visitor to Bayreuth. ”

“ Perhaps, indeed, next to voice and ear these are the most important qualities of all. But unfortunately they cannot be acquired by any amount of study.
How often has it not happened, indeed, that artists have been endowed in all other respects but these! They may have the most beautiful voices, they may sing with the most finished art, but for lack of these incommunicable attributes of the soul they never attain the highest places. They leave their audiences cold because they are cold themselves. ”

“ I myself have naturally a prejudice in favour of my beloved Italy, the traditional Land of Song, where, I am proud to think, the art of Bel Canto still finds its finest exponents and teachers, and where also there are greater facilities, I suppose, for hearing fine singing than in any other country in the world. ”

“ On the other hand, Battistini is most lavish with his practising and rarely a day passes that he does not put in one or two hours of solid singing. This no doubt accounts for the extraordinary command he has over tone, phrasing and breathing. There is great truth in the saying that practice makes perfect, but how many of us have the robust and natural organ that Battistini is blessed with. I always thought that the reason of this was the fact that Battistini, who could well have trained as a tenor, elected to become a baritone, thus evading the strain of forcing high “C’s” out of his voice. ”

“ Here, as so often in art, when grace and beauty are the objects aimed at, economy of effort is the grand secret.
There should never be any strain or forcing of any sort or kind, and on the same principle, it may be noted, is the rule as to the amount of breath emitted, which should always be the smallest quantity possible which suffices to produce the tone required. Let out enough breath and no more—keeping the remainder in reserve—that is one of the fundamental secrets of beautiful tone production. ”

“ For the art of the singer is brought into immediate relation with all the other arts. The singer has to deal with poetry and literature and the drama—if he takes up opera—in a way quite unknown to the mere instrumentalist.
A man might be a great pianist or a fine violinist—he might even be a great composer—without ever concerning himself at all with the other arts. ”

“ Ten minutes’ practice with the maximum of thought and concentration will be of more value than a whole hour of mere mechanical scales and arpeggi, sung without thought and care.
The pupil, while practising, should listen to himself with the utmost vigilance all the time—criticising ruthlessly every tone, and seeking always to eradicate every fault and blemish. ”

“ The great Patti, who told me I was her successor, also said to me that we artists will still be learning when we are too old to sing.
The average vocal student of to-day considers himself a finished artist at a time when he would be reckoned just qualified to begin serious study by the teachers of an earlier period.
While no amount of training will make fine voices out of poor material, the history of singing furnishes numerous instances—that of Pasta is one of the best known—in which limited natural powers have been developed to an astonishing degree by study and training. ”

“ Madame Lilli Lehmann prescribes, for instance, what she calls the Great Scale as an invaluable{106} remedy for all manner of vocal ills—meaning simply long slow scales of sustained notes steadily repeated. Here is what she said, for instance, on this point:
“The great scale properly employed in practice accomplishes wonders. It equalises the voice, makes it flexible and noble, gives strength to all weak places, operates to repair all breaks and faults that exist, and controls the voice to the very heart. Nothing escapes it. It is the Guardian Angel of the voice. ”

“ The pronunciation of foreign languages is a point to which the student can hardly give too much attention. It also affords another argument in favour of study abroad, since it is certain that a foreign language cannot possibly be acquired so effectually anywhere as in the land where it is spoken. And foreign languages are indispensable to a singer nowadays who aspires to be equal to all the requirements of the modern répertoire. ”

“ Yet we are glad to have “Don Giovanni” and “King Lear” none the less! It is, indeed, truly straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel to condemn coloratura while accepting opera as a whole.
I go further than this, for I venture to say that coloratura can be not only delightful to the ear but also thoroughly appropriate and dramatically expressive. What could be more suitable to give{78} expression to the madness of Lucia than the roulades which Donizetti gives to her? Or how could the joy of Marguérite be more exquisitely expressed than in the strains of Gounod’s “Jewel Song”? ”

“ At the same time even practising should not be carried to excess. Many singers have, indeed, often done their voices great harm by practising too much. The vocal cords are exceedingly delicate and cannot be used too carefully. There can be no doubt that the wonderful preservation of Patti’s voice was due in large measure to the extraordinary prudence and care with which she husbanded it. By never singing at rehearsals, by never singing when she was in the least degree out of health or tired, and so on, she added years probably to the length of her career. ”

“ What is the difference in principle, I would ask, between the fioriture passages of the vocalist and those introduced as a matter of course in the most{76} serious instrumental music? Why should a cadenza for the voice be reckoned less worthy than a similar passage for the violin or the ’cello? All the greatest masters have introduced florid passages in plenty in the noblest instrumental music. Yet the view is very generally adopted that these are inadmissible, or, at all events, belong to an inferior phase of the art when the instrument employed happens to be the voice. ”

“ People, who would not dream of attempting to play the violin or give a piano solo in public without thorough preparation, will have no hesitation in standing up and attempting to sing, although they may be just as little qualified in the one case as in the other. They do not realise that the voice is, in reality, one of the most delicate and difficult{14} of all instruments and demands in consequence no less study and practice than any other before it can be really artistically employed. ”

“ This may sound self-obvious, but I am afraid that in practice the attitude of the average student—and not of the student only, but also of the experienced artist—is very different. A fatal self-satisfaction seems, for some reason or other, to be one of the commonest failings of the average singer. One fairly well-known singer invited my criticism of her voice, and when I obliged and told her what she must do to become a great artist she replied, “But I am a great artist.” ”

“ As to the charge that coloratura in dramatic music is unnatural and undramatic, those who argue thus surely overlook the fact that all opera might with equal justice be disposed of in the same manner. People do not express themselves in song in real life, any more than they speak in blank verse, as they are made to do in Shakespearean drama. ”

“ You can really produce a tone in your face or in your throat. It is all produced by the vocal cords, and nowhere else, and merely receives its specific quality or character, so to speak, by, in part, the natural formation, and, in part, the conscious adjustment of the passages through which it passes on its way to the mouth. ”

“ German singing seems to be different, not merely in degree, but even in kind from that of other lands. In the case of even its best exponents there is a harshness and a tonelessness about it which differentiates it from that of any other race. German singers often have strong,{86} lusty voices, likewise plenty of intelligence and dramatic feeling; but for beauty of tone and all the finer qualities of vocalism one listens for them in vain. ”

“ All this must be borne in mind, therefore, by the artist who turns from the stage to the concert room. The effect produced may be just as great, but it must be achieved in a different way—without action, without gesture even, but with the maximum of intensity none the less—secured by means of the voice, the expressiveness of the singing and the personality and temperament of the singer alone. ”

“ Grave indeed are the risks run by any student who attempts to supply his own requirements in this matter and to dispense with the skilled advice which only the trained expert can supply—entailing possibly the ruin of his entire career. ”

“ The fact must be recognised that there are no short cuts to perfection in singing any more than in any other art, and that those who wish to sing like the great ones of the past must be prepared to work and study as they did, in order to attain this end. ”

“ I might on this point quote that great artist once again, Lilli Lehmann, who, notwithstanding her strong leaning to music of the more serious class, including Wagner, in which she was so wonderful, was yet a great coloratura singer herself in her younger days, and who has strongly insisted upon the possibility of making even the most florid{79} music expressive also when it is sung in the right way.
She writes: “Thus in the coloratura passages of Mozart’s arias I have always sought to gain expressiveness by crescendi, choice of significant points for breathing, and breaking off of phrases. ”

“ Certainly I have never heard of even an Italian concert-singer going quite so far.
I need hardly add, while on the subject of concert deportment, that a pleasing and ingratiating manner is also much to be desired, though this is a matter that seems to be strangely overlooked too often by young artists of the present day. One might think almost from the manners of some of them that they consider themselves to be conferring the greatest possible favour upon their hearers by condescending to sing to them. ”

“ Some experienced teachers indeed recognise this fact so clearly that they do not advise even soprano singers to cultivate coloratura singing unless they have the necessary natural facility to begin with. I think myself, however, that all should endeavour to acquire the maximum agility, even if they do not attempt to sing coloratura in public, simply for the benefits which they will derive from it in other respects. After all the voice cannot be possessed of too much flexibility whatever style of music be attempted ”

“ Singers can acquire something of the same power, and must do so, indeed, if they hope ever to achieve the best results. For the production of good sustained tone is impossible if the art of breathing is not properly understood and acquired.
Among modern singers no one attached more importance to breathing and breath control than the late Signor Caruso, and no one, certainly, attained more wonderful results in this way. He developed his powers to such an extent indeed in{50} this respect, that it was said that he could move a grand piano by the expansion of the muscles of his diaphragm! ”