E-text prepared by Chuck Greif
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(/)
Metropolitan Company, Publishers
New York,
1909.
In offering this work to the public the publishers wish to lay beforethose who sing or who are about to study singing, the simple,fundamental rules of the art based on common sense. The two greatestliving exponents of the art of singing—Luisa Tetrazzini and EnricoCaruso—have been chosen as examples, and their talks on singing haveadditional weight from the fact that what they have to say has beenprinted exactly as it was uttered, the truths they expound are driven[3]home forcefully, and what they relate so simply is backed by years ofexperience and emphasized by the results they have achieved as the twogreatest artists in the world.
Much has been said about the Italian Method of Singing. It is a questionwhether anyone really knows what the phrase means. After all, if therebe a right way to sing, then all other ways must be wrong. Books havebeen written on breathing, tone production and what singers should eatand wear, etc., etc., all tending to make the singer self-conscious andto sing with the brain rather than with the heart. To quote Mme.Tetrazzini: "You can train the voice, you can take a raw material andmake it a finished production; not so with the heart."
The country is overrun with inferior teachers of singing; men and womenwho have failed to get before the public, turn to teaching without anypractical experience, and, armed only with a few methods, teach thesealike to all pupils, ruining many good voices. Should these pupilschange teachers, even for the better, then begins the weary undoing ofthe false method, of