Part 11

I might readily have secured letters from influential musical friends, such as Mascagni and others, but I determined that it would be best to secure an engagement upon my own merits, if I could, and then I would know whether or not I was really prepared to make my debut, or whether I had better study more. I went to the manager's office and, appealing to his business sense, told him that, as I was a young unknown singer, he could secure my services for little money, and begged for permission to sing for him. I knew he was beset by such requests, but he immediately gave me a hearing, and I was engaged for one performance of _Rigoletto_. The night of the debut came, and I was obliged to sing _Caro Nome_ again in response to a vociferous encore. This was followed by other successes, and I was engaged for two years for a South American tour, under the direction of my good friend and adviser, the great operatic director, Mugnone. In South America there was enthusiasm everywhere, but all the time I kept working constantly with my voice, striving to perfect details.

At the end of the South American tour I desired to visit New York and find out what America was like. Because of the war Europe was operatically impossible (it was 1916), but I had not the slightest idea of singing in the United States just then. By merest accident I ran into an American friend (Mr. Thorner) on Broadway. He had heard me sing in Italy, and immediately took me to Maestro Campanini, who was looking then for a coloratura soprano to sing for only two performances in Chicago, as the remainder of his program was filled for the year. This was in the springtime, and it meant that I was to remain in New York until October and November. The opportunity seemed like an unusual accident of fate, and I resolved to stay, studying my own voice all the while to improve it more and more. October and the debut in _Rigoletto_ came. The applause astounded me; it was electric, like a thunderstorm. No one was more astonished than I. Engagements and offers came from everywhere, but not enough, I hope, to ever induce me not to believe that in the vocal art one must continually strive for higher and higher goals. Laziness, indifference and lassitude which come with success are the ruin of Art and the artist. The normal healthy artist with the right ideals never reaches his Zenith. If he did, or if he thought he did, his career would come to a sudden end.

MARY GARDEN

BIOGRAPHICAL

Mary Garden was born February 20th, 1877, in Aberdeen, Scotland. She came to America with her parents when she was eight years of age and was brought up in Chicopee, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, and Chicago, Illinois. She studied the violin when she was six and the piano when she was twelve. It was the ambition of her parents to make her an instrumental performer. She studied voice with Mrs. S. R. Duff, who in time took her to Paris and placed her under the instruction of Trabadello and Lucien Fugere. Her operatic debut was made in Charpentier's _Louise_ at the Opera Comique in 1900. Her success was immediate both as an actress and as a singer. She was chosen by Debussy and others for especially intricate roles. She created the role of _Melisande_; also, _Fiammette_ in Laroux's _La Reine Fiammette_. In 1907 she made her American debut in _Thais_ at the Manhattan Opera House in New York City. Later she accepted leading roles with the Philadelphia-Chicago Opera Co. She is considered by many the finest singing actress living--her histrionic gifts being in every way equal to her vocal gifts. In 1921 she was made the manager of the Chicago Opera Company.

THE KNOW HOW IN THE ART OF SINGING

MARY GARDEN

The modern opera singer cannot content herself merely with the "know how" of singing. That is, she must be able to know so much more than the mere elemental facts of voice production that it would take volumes to give an intimation of the real requirements.

The girl who wants to sing in opera must have one thought and one thought only--"what will contribute to my musical, histrionic and artistic success?"

Unless the "career" comes first there is not likely to be any "career."

I wonder if the public ever realizes what this sacrifice means to an artiste--to a woman.

Of course, there are great recompenses--the thrill that comes with artistic triumphs--the sensations that accompany achievement--who but the artist can know what this means--the joy of bringing to life some great masterpiece?

Music manifests itself in children at a very early age. It is very rare indeed that it comes to the surface later in life. I was always musical. Only the media changed--one time it was violin, then piano, then voice. The dolls of my sisters only annoyed me because I could not tolerate dolls. They seemed a waste of time to me, and when they had paper dolls, I would go into the room when nobody was looking and cut the dolls' heads off. I have never been able to account for my delight in doing this.

My father was musical. He wanted me to be a musician, but he had little thought at first of my being a singer. Accordingly, at eight I was possessed of a fiddle. This meant more to me than all the dolls in the world. Oh, how I loved that violin, which I could make speak just by drawing a bow over it! There was something worth while.

I was only as big as a minute, and, of course, as soon as I could play the routine things of de Beriot, variations and the like, I was considered one of those abominable things, "an infant prodigy."

I was brought out to play for friends and any musical person who could stand it. Then I gave a concert, and my father saw the finger of destiny pointing to my career as a great violinist.

To me the finger of destiny pointed the other way; because I immediately sickened of the violin and dropped it forever. Yes, I could play now if I had to, but you probably wouldn't want to hear me.

Ah, but I do play. I play every time I sing. The violin taught me the need for perfect intonation, fluency in execution, ever so many things.

Then came the piano. Here was a new artistic toy. I worked very hard with it. My sister and I went back to Aberdeen for a season of private school, and I kept up my piano until I could play acceptably many of the best-known compositions, Grieg, Chopin, etc., being my favorites. I was never a very fine pianist, understand me, but the piano unlocked the doors to thousands of musical treasure houses--admitted me to musical literature through the main gate, and has been of invaluable aid to me in my career. See my fingers, how long and thin they are--of course, I was a capable pianist--long, supple fingers, combined with my musical experience gained in violin playing, made that certain.

Then I dropped the piano. Dropped it at once. Its possibilities stood revealed before me, and they were not to be the limit of my ambitions.

For the girl who hopes to be an operatic "star" there could be nothing better than a good drilling in violin or piano. The girl has no business to sing while she is yet a child--and she is that until she is sixteen or over. Better let her work hard getting a good general education and a good musical education. The voice will keep, and it will be sweeter and fresher if it is not overused in childhood.

Once, with my heart set upon becoming a singer, my father fortunately took me to Mrs. Robinson Duff, of Chicago. To her, my mentor to this day, I owe much of my vocal success. I was very young and very emotional, with a long pigtail down my back. At first the work did not enrapture me, for I could not see the use of spending so much time upon breathing. Now I realize what it did for me.

What should the girl starting singing avoid? First, let her avoid an incompetent teacher. There are teachers, for instance, who deliberately teach the "stroke of the glottis" (coup de glotte).

What is the stroke of the glottis? The lips of the vocal cords in the larynx are pressed together so that the air becomes compressed behind them and instead of coming out in a steady, unimpeded stream, it causes a kind of explosion. Say the word "up" in the throat very forcibly and you will get the right idea.

This is a most pernicious habit. Somehow, it crept into some phases of vocal teaching, and has remained. It leads to a constant irritation of the throat and ruin to the vocal organs.

When I went to Paris, Mrs. Duff took me to many of the leading vocal teachers of the city, and said, "Now, Mary, I want you to use your own judgment in picking out a teacher, because if you don't like the teacher you will not succeed."

Thus we went around from studio to studio. One asked me to do this--to hum--to make funny, unnatural noises, anything but sing. Finally, Trabadello, now retired to his country home, really asked me to sing in a normal, natural way, not as a freak. I said to myself, "This is the teacher for me." I could not have had a better one.

Look out for teachers with freak methods--ten to one they are making you one of their experiments. There is nothing that any voice teacher has ever found superior to giving simple scales and exercises sung upon the syllables Lah (ah, as in harbor), Leh (eh, as in they), Lee (ee, as in me). With a good teacher to keep watch over the breathing and the quality, "what more can one have?"

I have always believed in a great many scales and in a great deal of singing florid roles in Italian. Italian is inimitable for the singer. The dulcet, velvet-like character of the language gives something which nothing else can impart. It does not make any difference whether you purpose singing in French, German, English, Russian or Soudanese, you will gain much from exercising in Italian.

Staccato practice is valuable. Here is an exercise which I take nearly every day of my life:

The staccato must be controlled from the diaphragm, however, and this comes only after a great deal of work.

Three-quarters of an hour a day practice suffices me. I find it injurious to practice too long. But I study for hours. Such a role as _Aphrodite_ I take quietly and sing it over mentally time and time again without making a sound. I study the harmonies, the nuances, the phrasing, the breathing, so that when the time for singing it comes I know it and do not waste my voice by going over it time and again, as some singers do. In the end I find that I know it better for this kind of study.

The study of acting has been a very personal matter with me. I have never been through any courses of study, such as that given in dramatic schools. This may do for some people, but it would have been impossible for me. There must be technic in all forms of art, but it has always seemed to me that acting was one of the arts in which the individual must make his own technic. I have seen many representatives of the schools of acting here and abroad. Sometimes their performances, based upon technical studies of the art, result in superb acting. Again, their work is altogether indifferent. Technic in acting is more likely to suppress than to inspire. If acting is not inspired, it is nothing. I study the human emotions that would naturally underlie the scene in which I am placed--then I think what one would be most likely to do under such conditions. When the actual time of appearance on the stage arrives, I forget all about this and make myself the person of the role.

This is the Italian method rather than the French. There are, to my mind, no greater actors living than Duse and Zacchona, and they are both exponents of the natural method that I employ.

Great acting has always impressed me wonderfully. I went from Paris to London repeatedly to see Beerbohm Tree in his best roles. Sir Herbert was not always uniformly fine, but he was a great actor and I learned much from watching him. Once I induced Debussy to make the trip to see him act. Debussy was delighted.

Debussy! Ah, what a rare genius--my greatest friend in Art! Everything he wrote we went over together. He was a terribly exacting master. Few people in America realize what a transcendent pianist he was. The piano seemed to be thinking, feeling, vibrating while he was at the keyboard. Time and again we went over his principal works, note for note. Now and then he would stop and clasp his hands over his face in sudden silence, repeating, "It is all wrong--it is all wrong." But he was too good a teacher to let it go at that. He could tell me exactly what was wrong and how to remedy it. When I first sang for him, at the time when they were about to produce _Pelleas and Melisande_ at the Opera Comique, I thought that I had not pleased him. But I learned later that he had said to M. Carre, the director: "Don't look for anyone else." From that time he and his family became my close friends. The fatalistic side of our meeting seemed to interest him very much. "To think," he used to say, "that you were born in Aberdeen, Scotland, lived in America all those years and should come to Paris to create my _Melisande_!"

As I have said, Debussy was a gorgeous pianist. He could play with the greatest delicacy and could play in the leonine fashion of Rubinstein. He was familiar with Beethoven, Bach, Handel and the classics, and was devoted to them. Wagner he could not abide. He called him a "griffe papier"--a scribbler. He thought that he had no importance in the world of music, and to mention Wagner to him was like waving a red flag before a bull.

It is difficult to account for such an opinion. Wagner, to me, is the great tone colorist, the master of orchestral wealth and dramatic intensity. Sometimes I have been so Wagner-hungry that I have not known what to do. For years I went every year to Munich to see the wonderful performances at the Prinzregenten Theater.

In closing let me say that it seems to me a great deal of the failure among young singers is that they are too impatient to acquire the "know how." They want to blossom out on the first night as great prima donnas, without any previous experience. How ridiculous this is! I worked for a whole year at the Opera Comique, at $100 a month, singing such a trying opera as _Louise_ two and three times a week. When they raised me to $175 a month I thought that I was rich, and when $400 a month came, my fortune had surely been made! All this time I was gaining precious experience. It could not have come to me in any other way. As I have said, the natural school--the natural school, like that of the Italians--stuffed as it is with glorious red blood instead of the white bones of technic in the misunderstood sense, was the only possible school for me. If our girls would only stop hoping to make a debut at $1,000 a night and get down to real hard work, the results would come much quicker and there would be fewer broken hearts.

MME. ALMA GLUCK

BIOGRAPHICAL

Mme. Alma Gluck was born at Jassy, Roumania. Her father played the violin, but was not a professional musician. At the age of six she was brought to America. She was taught the piano and sang naturally, but had no idea of becoming a singer. Her vocal training was not begun until she was twenty years of age. Her teacher, at that time, was Signor Buzzi-Peccia, with whom she remained for three years, going directly from his studio to the Metropolitan Opera House of New York. She remained there for three years, when the immense success of her concert work drew her away from opera. She then studied with Jean de Reszke, and later with Mme. Sembrich for four or five years. Since then she has appeared in all parts of the United States with unvarying success. Her records have been among the most popular of any ever issued. Together with her husband, Efrem Zimbalist, the distinguished violinist, she has appeared before immense audiences in joint recitals.

BUILDING A VOCAL REPERTOIRE

ALMA GLUCK

Many seem surprised when I tell them that my vocal training did not begin until I was twenty years of age. It seems to me that it is a very great mistake for any girl to begin the serious study of singing before that age, as the feminine voice, in most instances, is hardly settled until then. Vocal study before that time is likely to be injurious, though some survive it in the hands of very careful and understanding teachers.

The first kind of a repertoire that the student should acquire is a repertoire of solfeggios. I am a great believer in the solfeggio. Using that for a basis, one is assured of acquiring facility and musical accuracy. The experienced listener can tell at once the voice that has had such training. Always remember that musicianship carries one much further than a good natural voice. The voice, even more than the hands, needs a kind of exhaustive technical drill. This is because in this training you are really building the instrument itself. In the piano, one has the instrument complete before he begins; but in the case of the voice, the instrument has to be developed and sometimes _made_ by study. When the pupil is practicing, tones grow in volume, richness and fluency.

There are exercises by Bordogni, Concone, Vaccai, Lamperti, Marchesi, Panofka, Panserson and many others with which I am not familiar, which are marvelously beneficial when intelligently studied. These I sang on the syllable "Ah," and not with the customary syllable names. It has been said that the syllables Do, Re, Mi, Fa, etc., aid one in reading. To my mind, they are often confusing.

GO TO THE CLASSICS

After a thorough drilling in solfeggios and technical exercises, I would have the student work on the operatic arias of Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, and others. These men knew how to write for the human voice! Their arias are so vocal that the voice develops under them and the student gains vocal assurance. They were written before modern philosophy entered into music--when music was intended for the ear rather than for the mind. I cannot lay too much stress on the importance of using these arias. They are a tonic for the voice, and bring back the elasticity which the more subdued singing of songs taxes.

When one is painting pictures through words, and trying to create atmosphere in songs, so much repression is brought into play that the voice must have a safety-valve, and that one finds in the bravura arias. Here one sings for about fifty bars, "The sky is clouded for me," "I have been betrayed," or "Joy abounds"--the words being simply a vehicle for the ever-moving melody.

When hearing an artist like John McCormack sing a popular ballad it all seems so easy, but in reality songs of that type are the very hardest to sing and must have back of them years of hard training or they fall to banality. They are far more difficult than the limpid operatic arias, and are actually dangerous for the insufficiently trained voice.

THE LYRIC SONG REPERTOIRE

Then when the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are! The works of the lighter French composers, Hahn, Massenet, Chaminade, Gounod, and others. Then Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Loewe, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. Later the student will continue with Strauss, Wolf, Reger, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Mousorgsky, Borodin and Rachmaninoff. Then the modern French composers, Ravel, Debussy, Georges, Koechlin, Hue, Chausson, and others. I leave French for the last because it is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels that it requires the utmost subtlety to overcome these difficulties and still retain clarity in diction. For that reason the student should have the advice of a native French coach.

When one has traveled this long road, then he is qualified to sing English songs and ballads.

AMERICAN SONGS

In this country we are rich in the quantity of songs rather than in the quality. The singer has to go through hundreds of compositions before he finds one that really says something. Commercialism overwhelms our composers. They approach their work with the question, "Will this go?" The spirit in which a work is conceived is that in which it will be executed. Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side fairly screams in many of the works put out by every-day American publishers. This does not mean that a song should be queer or ugly to be novel or immortal. It means that the sincerity of the art worker must permeate it as naturally as the green leaves break through the dead branches in springtime. Of the vast number of new American composers, there are hardly more than a dozen who seem to approach their work in the proper spirit of artistic reverence.

ART FOR ART'S SAKE, A FARCE

Nothing annoys me quite so much as the hysterical hypocrites who are forever prating about "art for art's sake." What nonsense! The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism. Art for art's sake is just as iniquitous an attitude in its way as art for money's sake. The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does what he does for one reason and one reason only--he can't help doing it. Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.

Time and again a student will send me an urgent appeal to hear her, saying she is poor and wants my advice as to whether it is worth while to continue her studies. I invariably refuse such requests, saying that if the student could give up her work on my advice she had better give it up without it. One does not study for a goal. One sings because one can't help it! The "goal" nine times out of ten is a mere accident.

Art for art's sake is the mask of studio idlers. The task of acquiring a repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, is so overwhelming, that the student with sense will devote all his energies to work, and not imagine himself a martyr to art.

EMILIO DE GOGORZA

BIOGRAPHICAL

Emilio Edoardo de Gogorza was born in Brooklyn, New York, May 29th, 1874, of Spanish parents. His boyhood was spent in Spain, France and England. In the last named country he became a boy soprano and sang with much success. Part of his education was received at Oxford. He returned to America, where his vocal teachers were C. Moderati and E. Agramonte. His debut was made in 1897 in a concert with Mme. Marcella Sembrich. His rich fluent baritone voice made him a great favorite at musical festivals in America. He has sung with nearly all of the leading American orchestras. The peculiar quality of his voice is especially adapted to record making and his records have been immensely popular. He married Emma Eames, July 13th, 1911.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUNG CONCERT SINGERS

EMILIO DE GOGORZA

There has never been a time or a country presenting more inviting opportunities to the concert and the oratorio singer than the America of to-day. As a corollary to this statement there is the obvious fact that the American public, taken as a whole, is now the most discriminating public to be found anywhere in the world. Every concert is adequately reviewed by able writers; and singers are continually on their mettle. It therefore follows that while there are opportunities for concert and oratorio singers, there is no room for the inefficient, the talentless, brainless aspirants who imagine that a great vocal career awaits them simply because they have a few good tones and a pleasing stage presence.