ount of time. If good results are not forthcoming in from
nine months to a year, something is wrong with either the pupil or the
teacher.

The matter of securing vocal flexibility should not be postponed too
long, but may in many instances be taken up in conjunction with the
studies in tone production, after the first principles have been
learned. Thereafter one enters upon the endless and indescribably
interesting field of securing a repertoire. Only a teacher with wide
experience and intimacy with the best in the vocal literature of the
world can correctly grade and select pieces suitable to the
ever-changing needs of the pupil.

No matter how wonderful the flexibility of the voice, no matter how
powerful the tones, no matter how extensive the repertoire, the singer
will find all this worthless unless he possesses a voice that is
susceptible to the expression of every shade of mental and emotional
meaning which his intelligence, experience and general culture have
revealed to him in the work he is interpreting. At all times his voice
must be under control. Considered from the mechanical standpoint, the
voice resembles the violin, the breath, as it passes over the vocal
cords, corresponding to the bow and the resonance chambers corresponding
to the resonance chambers in the violin.

5. _Familiarity With Vocal Traditions._--We come to the matter of the
study of the traditional methods of interpreting vocal masterpieces. We
must, of course, study these traditions, but we must not be slaves to
them. In other words, we must know the past in order to interpret
masterpieces properly in the present. We must not, however, sacrifice
that great quality--individuality--for slavery to convention. If the
former Italian method of rendering certain arias was marred by the
tremolo of some famous singers, there is no good artistic reason why any
one should retain anything so hideous as a tremolo solely because it is
traditional.

There is a capital story of a young American singer who went to a
European opera house with all the characteristic individuality and
inquisitiveness of his people. In one opera the stage director told him
to go to the back of the stage before singing his principal number and
then walk straight down to the footlights and deliver the aria. "Why
must I go to the back first?" asked the young singer. The director was
amazed and blustered: "Why? Why, because the great Rubini did it that
way--he created the part