OF SINGING***


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CARUSO AND TETRAZZINI ON THE ART OF SINGING

by

ENRICO CARUSO and LUISA TETRAZZINI







Metropolitan Company, Publishers, New York, 1909.




PREFACE


In offering this work to the public the publishers wish to lay before
those who sing or who are about to study singing, the simple,
fundamental rules of the art based on common sense. The two greatest
living exponents of the art of singing--Luisa Tetrazzini and Enrico
Caruso--have been chosen as examples, and their talks on singing have
additional weight from the fact that what they have to say has been
printed exactly as it was uttered, the truths they expound are driven
home forcefully, and what they relate so simply is backed by years of
experience and emphasized by the results they have achieved as the two
greatest artists in the world.

Much has been said about the Italian Method of Singing. It is a question
whether anyone really knows what the phrase means. After all, if there
be a right way to sing, then all other ways must be wrong. Books have
been written on breathing, tone production and what singers should eat
and wear, etc., etc., all tending to make the singer self-conscious and
to sing with the brain rather than with the heart. To quote Mme.
Tetrazzini: "You can train the voice, you can take a raw material and
make it a finished production; not so with the heart."

The country is overrun with inferior teachers of singing; men and women
who have failed to get before the public, turn to teaching without any
practical experience, and, armed only with a few methods, teach these
alike to all pupils, ruining many good voices. Should these pupils
change teachers, even for the better, then begins the weary undoing of
the false method, often with no better result.

To these unfortunate pupils this book is of inestimable value. He or she
could not consistently choose such teachers after reading its pages.
Again the simple rules laid down and tersely and interestingly set forth
not only carry conviction with them, but tear away the veil of mystery
that so often is thrown about the divine art.

Luisa Tetrazzini and Enrico Caruso show what not to do, as well as what
to do, and bring the pupil back to first principles--the art of singing
naturally.




THE ART OF SINGING

By Luisa Tetrazzini

[Illustration: LUISA TETRAZZINI]




LUISA TETRAZZINI

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH OF THE CAREER OF THE WORLD-FAMOUS PRIMA DONNA


Luisa Tetrazzini, the most famous Italian coloratura soprano of the
day, declares that she began to sing before she learned to talk. Her
parents were not musical, but her elder sister, now the wife of the
eminent conductor Cleofante Campanini, was a public singer of
established reputation, and her success roused her young sister's
ambition to become a great artist. Her parents were well to do, her
father having a large army furnishing store in Florence, and they did
not encourage her in her determination to become a prima donna. One
prima donna, said her father, was enough for any family.

Luisa did not agree with him. If one prima donna is good, she argued,
why would not two be better? So she never desisted from her importunity
until she was permitted to become a pupil of Professor Coccherani, vocal
instructor at the Lycee. At this time she had committed to memory more
than a dozen grand opera roles, and at the end of six months the
professor confessed that he could do nothing more for her voice; that
she was ready for a career.

She made her bow to the Florentine opera going public, one of the most
critical in Italy, as Inez, in Meyerbeer's "L'Africaine," and her
success was so pronounced that she was engaged at a salary of $100 a
month, a phenomenal beginning for a young singer. Queen Margherita was
present on the occasion and complimented her highly and prophesied for
her a great career. She asked the trembling debutante how old she was,
and in the embarrassment of the moment Luisa made herself six years
older than she really was. This is one noteworthy instance in which a
public singer failed to discount her age.

Fame came speedily, but for a long time it was confined to Europe and
Latin America. She sang seven seasons in St. Petersburg, three in