Many ambitious young women save money with the aim of attending a musical college. This is an education I never advocate, for I believe in individual training. No student can attain the best results in a class where personal supervision is a matter of perfunctory duty. Certainly good singers have come from musical colleges, but they have had temperament and personality such as rise above the system. And to work at any trade or profession while cultivating the voice is a questionable arrangement, for the student takes vitality from the voice and places it in another direction.
I doubt if one could with correctness summarily assign characteristics to the vocal students of the different nations; and, besides, one likes to think of music as cosmopolitan—universal in its inspiration and influence. The Italian girl is perhaps the readiest to help her song by facial expression, the French girl the first to master the poetic message, and the German the most thorough in all-round pursuit of musical knowledge. Many American and British students are too easily satisfied, and often, on securing a certain measure of success at their first public appearance, refrain from further study at the very time that their work should be regarded as beginning in real earnest.
As to the voices of the different nations with which I am familiar, it is a difficult and thankless task to summarise them within the inadequate limit of a few lines. I should say, however, that the voices of Italy are the most natural. They are the voices of the sun; just as in my native land, Australia, the Italy of the southern hemisphere, the voices seem to glint and vibrate as it with liquid sunlight. There is in these Southern voices a resonance rarely found in voices of the North.
As to Germany, I should say that the singing voices are more the result of science than of nature—less buoyant, less responsive, yet superb in their own way. The great singers of France, to my mind, could be more accurately described as great diseurs, so exquisitely are they practised in the art of diction. No singers so effectively show the beauty or importance of the words sung.
The cosmopolitan conditions of America seem to me to have so far militated against the development of any particular voice or school that could be accurately labelled "American," while the English voices are particularly adapted for concert and oratorio singing.
Owing to the characteristic reserve of the English people, they are, as a rule, slow to commit themselves to that temperamental abandon which is essential to operatic interpretation. I am, however, glad to be able to say without any reserve that I consider the English choruses the finest in the world. I refer more specially to the great choirs heard at the English musical festivals. What volume and beauty of tone, what precision and light and shade, are embodied in their work! Personally, if I can be said to dislike any form of music, it is oratorio; but when I hear an English chorus at a festival in Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, or Worcester, I am almost persuaded to become an oratorio enthusiast.
This paper would not be complete without some reference to personal appearance as an asset in a singer's career. There is much suggestion, expression even, in the turn of a curl. The woman who knows how to "make up" effectively is more of an artist than the one who does not. The whole thing makes for artistic completeness.
I have known handsome women appear unattractive on the stage or platform merely because they relied entirely on their natural physical gifts without considering how these were affected by the space, and structural and lighting conditions, of the building in which they sang. There are cases where good looks are the main reason for the exploitation of a singer; but such favour is bound to be short-lived, and no artistic reputation can be long maintained on so false a basis.
As to securing an introduction to the public, I have little to say beyond the fact that ability will surely find its way. In my own path great obstacles were placed, but I do not think anything in this world could have hindered me from becoming a singer. I have sung to an audience of two, and such was my girlish enthusiasm that I have even acted as my own billposter, with a pot of paste procured from a hotel kitchen. The occasion was a chanty concert at an Australian seaside resort for the purpose of repairing a neglected country cemetery. Later I had to abandon proposed concerts because there was not enough support to pay for the lighting of the hall. Yet I persevered, and my chance came. It is well to aim at the highest, yet in my heart of hearts I believe that every really great singer is born rather than made.
No teacher living can impart temperament and an infallible ear for music. A perfect chest, larynx, and resonance chambers are also gifts of God; and so, too, are the musical intuition, the ravishing voice, the industry, the ambition, and the perfect physical health, which are all attributes of vocalists who have become really great.