MME. GERALDINE FARRAR
What must I do to become a prima donna? Let us reverse the usual method of discussing the question and begin with the artist upon the stage in a great opera house like the Metropolitan in New York, on a gala night, every seat sold and hundreds standing. It is a modern opera with a "heavy" score. What is the first consideration of the singer?
Primarily, an artist in grand opera must sing in some fashion to insure the proper projection of her rôle across the large spaces of the all-too-large auditoriums. Those admirable requisites of clear diction, facial expression and emotional appeal will be sadly hampered unless the medium of sound carries their message. It is only from sad experience that one among many rises superior to some of the disadvantages of our modern opera repertoire. Gone are the days when the facile vocalist was supported by a small group of musicians intent upon a discreet accompaniment for the benefit of the singer's vocal exertions. Voices trained for the older repertoire were not at the mercy of an enlarged orchestra pit, wherein the over-zealous gentlemen now fight—furioso ad libitum—for the supremacy of operatic effects.
An amiable musical observer once asked me why we all shouted so in opera. I replied by a question, asking if he had ever made an after-dinner speech. He acquiesced. I asked him how many times he rapped on the table for attention and silence. He admitted it was rather often. I asked him why. He said, so that he might be heard. He answered his own question by conceding that the carrying timbre of a voice cannot compete successfully against even banquet hall festivities unless properly focused out of a normal speaking tone. The difference between a small room and one seating several hundred is far greater than the average auditor realizes. If the mere rattling of silver and china will eclipse this vocal effort in speech I leave to your imagination what must transpire when the singer is called upon to dominate with one thread of song the tremendous onslaught of an orchestra and to rise triumphant above it in a theater so large that the faithful gatherers in the gallery tell me we all look like pigmies, and half the time are barely heard. Since the recesses where we must perform are so exaggerated everything must be in like proportion, hence we are very often too noisy, but how can it be otherwise if we are to influence the eager taxpayer in row X? After all, he has not come to hear us whisper, and his point of vantage is not so admirable as if he were sitting at a musical comedy in a small theater. For this condition the size of the theater and the instrumentation imposed by the composer are to be censured, and less blame placed upon the overburdened shoulders of the vocal competitor against these odds. Little shading in operatic tone color is possible unless an accompanying phrase permits it or the trumpeter swallows a pin!
Lucia or Zaza
If your repertoire is The Barber, Lucia, Somnambula and all such Italian dainties, well and good. Nothing need disturb the complete enjoyment of this lace-work. But if your auditors weep at Butterfly and Zaza or thrill to Pagliacci, they demand you use a quite different technic, which comes to the point of my story.
I believe it was Jean de Reszke who advocated the voice "in the mask" united to breath support from the diaphragm. From personal observation I should say our coloratura charmers lay small emphasis on that highly important factor and use their head voices with a freedom more or less God given. But the power and life-giving quality of this fundamental cannot be too highly estimated for us who must color our phrases to suit modern dramatics and evolve a carrying quality that will not only eliminate the difficulty of vocal demands, but at the same time insure immunity from harmful after-effects. This indispensable twin of the head voice is the dynamo which alone must endure all the necessary fatigue, leaving the actual voice phrases free to float unrestricted with no ignoble distortions or possible signs of distress. Alas! it is not easy to write of this, but the experience of years proves how vital a point is its saving grace and how, unfortunately, it remains an unknown factor to many.
To note two of our finest examples of greatness in this marvelous profession, Lilli Lehmann and Jean de Reszke, neither of whom had phenomenal vocal gifts, I would point out their remarkable mental equipment, unceasing and passionate desire for perfection, paired with an unerring instinct for the noble and distinguished such as has not been found in other exponents of purely vocal virtuosity, with a few rare exceptions, as Melba and Galli-Curci, for instance, to mention two beautiful instruments of our generation.
The singing art is not a casual inspiration and it should never be treated as such. The real artist will have an organized mental strategy just as minute and reliable as any intricate machinery, and will under all circumstances (save complete physical disability) be able to control and dominate her gifts to their fullest extent. This is not learned in a few years within the four walls of a studio, but is the result of a lifetime of painstaking care and devotion.
There was a time when ambition and overwork so told upon me that mistakenly I allowed myself to minimize my vocal practice. How wrong that was I found out in short time and I have returned long since to my earlier precepts as taught me by Lilli Lehmann.