he 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:

[Illustration: musical notation]

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 pr