preparation for the great Nibelung
festival in 1876, he had the greatest difficulty in securing a
sufficient number of competent interpreters for the different roles
of the trilogy, though he had all the German opera companies to choose
from. His private letters and essays are full of lamentations
regarding the rarity of singers able to interpret, not only his works,
but those of Weber, Gluck, or Mozart. Good singers, he says in one
place, are so rare that the managers have to pay their weight in gold
and jewelry. But the cause of this, he continues, is not the lack of
good voices, but their improper training in the wrong direction.
German teachers have tried to adapt the voices of their pupils to the
Italian _canto_, which is incompatible with the German language.
"Hitherto," he says in another place, "the voice has been trained
exclusively after the model of Italian songs; there was no other. But
the character of Italian songs was determined by the general spirit of
Italian music, which, in the time of its full bloom, was best
exemplified by the sopranists, because the aim of this music was mere
enjoyment of the senses, without any regard for genuine depth of
feeling--as is also shown by the fact that the voice of young manhood,
the tenor voice, was hardly used at all at this period, and later only
in a sopranistic way, as falsetto. Now, the spirit of modern music,
under the undisputed leadership of German genius, especially
Beethoven, has succeeded in first rising to the true dignity of art,
by bringing within the sphere of its incomparable expressiveness, not
only what is agreeable to the senses, but also an energetic
spirituality and emotional depth." Evidently, he concludes, a singer
trained in the spirit of the old-fashioned, merely sensuous music, is
unable to cope with modern dramatic music, and the result is the
failure and premature collapse of so many promising singers, who might
have become great artists had they been rationally instructed.

Misinformed or prejudiced critics have told us countless times that
Wagner assigned the voice a secondary place in his works because he
cared less for it than for the orchestra, and did not understand its
nature and uses. The fact is that no one can read his essays,
especially those on Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and on Actors and
Vocalists, without being impressed with his unbounded admiration for
the voice, and his practical knowledge of its highest functions and
correct