And whatever style you cultivate get as near to perfection in it as you can possibly. Catalani said of Sontag: “Elle est la première dans son genre; mais son genre n’est pas le premier.” This may or may not have been true. But Sontag was probably well pleased, in any case, to be “la première.”
Chapter XXII
HOW I SING AN ARIA
TO sing a song or a big aria well you must, for the time, be both the vocalist and composer of the words and music you wish to express. If I wish to sing, say, “Home Sweet Home,” I must imagine how far I am away from sunny Italy, and forget all the kindness and attention with which I am surrounded here. Then, I begin to feel the mood and homesickness coming to aid me, vocal control must do the rest in making the song effective.
Or, again, if I wish to do justice to Sir Frederick Cowen’s charming little song, “The Swallows,” I must think of a lovely sunny morning and, mentally, “Open wide my lattice, letting in the laughing breeze,” imagining all the joyous sense of life that the arrival of the swallows brings to my naturally vivacious Southern nature.
Let us, however, take the Recitative and Polonaise from that brilliantly sparkling opera “Mignon,” by Ambroise Thomas. First of all, I have to study the setting of this great aria, and then study the words, which, in English begin,
“Yes! for to-night I am Queen of the Fairies,
And here my golden sceptre see;
And behold these, my trophies!”
I ask myself what I might feel like were I able to become a fairy. Giving myself free rein, I sing the whole recitative much as I would speak it, only having in mind the notes, I attack them firmly, letting the conductor punctuate the whole with the accompaniment somewhat freely. In recitative, one must have fire and imagination, and, although reasonable attention must be paid to the valuation of notes—the full five beats, for example, on the long note of bars 6 and 7—it is the part of the accompanist to feel your pulse, as it were, and go with you. Now, on the same long note, be careful to carry a sense of increasing wonder, by making a diminuendo, then, with increasing verve, make a clean “turn” on beat four of the 8th bar, capped by a triumphant pause, and, a clean interval of the fifth with the word “trophies,” on beats one and two of bar 9.
Now we come to the actual Polacca, in which tempo must be observed and all the tricks of brilliant vocal agility put into play. Remember, all these “runs” and bravura passages must be clear—every note like a fresh pea out of a pod or bullet out of a machine gun! Observe the boldness of “picking up” at the beginning of the polacca movement, and in bar 3 of this movement how smoothly the detached notes have to be sung.
Moderato tempo di Polacca (96♩)