Let it be remembered especially by the student who runs through a part so easily in the privacy of his study with the aid of a friendly accompanist at the piano, how infinitely more difficult are the conditions on the actual stage—alike in the psychological and purely material senses.
There is the consciousness, in the first place, of being part now of a huge inexorable organisation which admits of no error or failure under any circumstances, and that at first has an almost paralysing effect upon the faculties. There is the consciousness of that eager, critical public on the other side of the footlights and of all that there is at stake should any failure occur. There is the difficulty in the physical sense of hearing the orchestra properly, which seems so far off and so infinitely less helpful than the friendly homely piano. There are the perturbing factors of one’s costume, action, business. In short, the whole thing is utterly different, and for this reason, therefore, the young artist cannot be too firmly grounded in his rôle if he is to be proof against all the possibilities of failure and all mischances and mishaps in the hour of trial.
As to the actual process of mastering a rôle I believe thoroughly in the practice of studying it at the outset apart from the music. Read the whole book through and master the story and the drama completely in the first instance. Get every twist and turn and every detail of it into your mind. Try to visualise and represent it to yourself as realistically as possible.
Imagine that it all actually occurred and that you were, in fact, the character whose part you are to represent. Learn all you can about the period of the story, the scene of the action, the circumstances of the time, and so on, so as to realise it all as vividly as possible.
And then, having done this, study with equal thoroughness every detail of your own part. It may be only a small one. Never mind. You can make it just as lifelike and as perfect in its way as one of more importance if you make the most of it.
It was in this way that Mario always studied his parts, and most other great artists, I think, will be found to adopt a similar method. We read of Mario that no trouble was too great and no research too laborious to ensure that any rôle which he had undertaken should be represented as correctly and as perfectly as possible. Nor did his fastidious care end there, for he paid the greatest attention to his words also and even rewrote every line of his part in Gounod’s “Faust” because the words of the original Italian version were not sufficiently singable to please him.
It was Mario, also, who said that unless he had all that he was singing about in his head as well as in his throat he could never hope to do justice to his part.
It is the old, old story. The greatest results in anything are only to be obtained by unsparing labour. It may not be a complete statement of the case to say that genius is only an infinite capacity for taking pains. But it is certainly true to say that that capacity is almost always associated with the highest genius. Caruso supplied a more recent instance. He took endless pains to get his parts right in every detail. He was as careful, we read, about creating the proper make-up for the character which he was impersonating as he was about studying the proper gestures, declamation, and musical expression.
Signor Fucito writes:
“He pondered the mental, emotional and moral traits of the character as they were revealed not only in his own lines and music, but throughout the entire opera. If he found that insufficient he searched elsewhere—in art, in literature, in history. When he was preparing the rôle of Samson he went to the Bible for additional enlightenment on that legendary hero in order that he might visualise him more vividly; and when he was studying Eleazar he sought advice on Jewish customs from a prominent Yiddish actor of New York.”