working with such studies as those of Concone,
Bordogni, Luetgen, Marchesi or Garcia--the best part of the attention of
the teacher was given to the simple yet difficult matter of a beautiful
legato. After one has been through a mass of such material, the matter
of legato singing becomes more or less automatic. The tendency to slide
from one tone to another is done away with. The connection between one
tone and another in good legato is so clean, so free from blurs that
there is nothing to compare it with. One tone takes the place of another
just as though one coin or disk were placed directly on top of another
without any of the edges showing. The change is instantaneous and
imperceptible. If one were to gradually slide one coin over another coin
you would have a graphic illustration of what most people think is
legato. The result is that they sound like steam sirens, never quite
definitely upon any tone of the scale.

A GOOD LEGATO

A good legato can only be acquired after an enormous amount of thorough
training. The tendency to be careless is human. Habits of carefulness
come only after much drill. The object of the student and the teacher
should be to make a singer--not to acquire a scanty repertoire of a few
arias. Very few of the operas I now sing were learned in my student
days. That was not the object of my teacher. The object was to prepare
me to take up anything from _Martha_ to _Rosenkavalier_ and know how to
study it myself in the quickest and most thorough manner. Woe be to the
pupil of the teacher who spends most of the time in teaching songs,
arias, etc., before the pupil is really ready to study such things.

GOOD FOUNDATIONS

Everything is in a good foundation. If you expect a building to last
only a few weeks you might put up a foundation in a day or so--but if
you watch the builders of the great edifices here in American cities you
will find that more time is often spent upon the foundation than upon
the building itself. They dig right down to the bed rock and pile on so
much stone, concrete and steel that even great earthquakes are often
withstood.

A LARGE REPERTOIRE

With such a thorough foundation as I had it has not been difficult to
acquire a repertoire of some seventy-five operas. That is, by learning
one at a time and working continually over a number of years the operas
come easily. In learning a new work I first read the work through as a
whole several times to get the character