while the student of the pianoforte or the violin still will
devote years to acquiring perfection upon it, a person who thinks
himself gifted with a voice expects to become a singer with a year or
two of instruction, possibly even after studying only a few months. Yet
the apparatus concerned in voice-production is a most delicate one, and,
being easily ruined when incorrectly used, haste in learning how to use
it not only is absurd but criminal--voice-murder, in fact.

It has been said that one error of the old Italian method was that it
concerned itself only with beautiful tone-production, whereas real
singing is the vitalization of words by emotion. But the vitalization
of words by emotion may well follow upon beautiful tone-production and,
though in the case of the old Italians this undoubtedly was aided by the
smoothly flowing quality of the Italian language, a singer, properly
taught, should be able to sing beautifully in any tongue.

Besides haste, one great danger to-day to the art of singing, and
especially to the art of beautiful tone-production, which lies at the
root of all beautiful singing, is the modern worship of individualism,
of the ability of a person simply to do things differently from some one
else, instead of more artistically, so that we are beginning to attach
more importance to whims and personality than to observance of the canons
of true art. It is only when the individual has supreme intelligence,
that any such disregard of what constitutes true art should be tolerated.
Henry Irving, for example, was extraordinarily effective in certain roles,
while in others his acting was atrocious. But even in these latter there
was intellect behind what he did, and the spectator became so interested
in observing his manner of striving for an effect, that he forgave him
for falling short of what he strove for. But this is a very exceptional
and a very dangerous kind of precedent. Art ever is more honored in the
observance than in the breach. Yet its breach often is honored by modern
audiences, and especially operatic audiences, because they tend to rate
temperament too high and art too low, and to tolerate singers whose
voice-production is atrocious, simply because their temperament or
personality interests them. Take a case in point: The Croatian prima
donna, Milka Ternina, whose art ranges from Tosca to Isolde, sings (in
"Tosca") the invocation to the Virgin which precedes the killing of
Scarpia, with a