About seventy or one hundred persons make up the ballet of a modern grand opera. At least ten years of continuous study are required to make a finished ballet dancer in the histrionic sense. Many receive very large fees for their services. The art of stage dancing also has undergone many great reforms in recent years; and the ballets of to-day are therefore much more popular than they were in the latter part of the last century. The most popular ballets of to-day are the Coppelia and Sylvia of Delibes. The ballets from the operas of La Gioconda, Samson et Delila, Armide, Mephistophele, Aïda, Orfeo, L'Africaine, and The Damnation of Faust also are very popular.
At a modern opera house like the Metropolitan in New York City the number of employees will be between six hundred and seven hundred, and the cost of a season will be about one million dollars.
FRANCES ALDA
(MME. GIULIO GATTI-CASAZZA)
Biographical
Mme. Frances Alda was born at Christ Church, New Zealand, May 31st, 1883. She was educated at Melbourne and studied singing with Mathilde Marchesi in Paris. Her début was made in Massenet's Manon, at the Opera Comique in Paris in 1904. After highly successful engagements in Paris, Brussels, Parma and Milan (where she created the title rôle in the Italian version of Louise), she made her American début at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto. Since her initial success in New York she has been connected with the Metropolitan stage every season. In 1910 she married Giulio Gatti-Casazza, manager of the Metropolitan Opera House, and is probably better able to speak upon the subject herewith discussed than any one in America. She has also appeared with great success in London, Warsaw, Buenos Aires and other cities, in opera and in concert. Many of the most important leading rôles in modern opera have been created by her in America.
WHAT THE AMERICAN GIRL SHOULD KNOW ABOUT AN OPERATIC CAREER
MME. FRANCES ALDA (MME. GATTI-CASAZZA)
Regularity and Success
To the girl who aspires to have an operatic career, who has the requisite vocal gifts, physical health, stage presence and—most important of all—a high degree of intelligence, the great essential is regular daily work. This implies regular lessons, regular practice, regular exercise, regular sleep, regular meals—in fact, a life of regularity. The daily lesson in most cases seems an imperative necessity. Lessons strung over a series of years merely because it seems more economical to take one lesson a week instead of seven rarely produce the expected results. Marchesi, with her famous wisdom on vocal matters, advised twenty minutes a day and then not more than ten minutes at a time.