Then I hear someone say, "Perhaps their voices did not change, as they were tenors." There is some change at maturity in all voices. Very well, what about Victor Maurel? He was singing the grand opera roles at twenty-one. Jean Baptiste Faure took up the study of the voice at thirteen, and at twenty-two created the part of Mephistopheles in Faust.
These men and women, whose names stand out as brilliant stars in the firmament of music, studied and sang before and in their early teens, and these are the voices that have been everlasting.
Within the past six or eight years some beautiful singers have appeared in the grand opera—one tenor who claims to have studied less than six months before he appeared in grand opera, and a soprano, making the same claim, and this study is supposed to have taken place after they were out of their teens. It will be of interest to wait and watch these voices to see if they will withstand the wear of twenty-five years' service, and still be beautiful, or like the fire-fly, radiate their beautiful light but for a moment and then disappear.
SINGING LESSONS AS A HEALTH CULTURE.
I SHOULD like to take up the study of voice culture, but am not very strong."
That is the very reason you should take up singing. I have seen anæmic girls take up the study of voice culture, and at the end of one year's study develop perfect breathing, a fine full chest, rosy lips, warm hands, an elegant digestion, and a good disposition.
There is no tonic for the nerves equal to voice culture. At one of the large sanitariums where eight hundred and five patients were suffering from tuberculosis, there was but one who had been a singer. The nasal breathing prevents adenoids from developing. The deep respiration oxygenates the blood and gives us power to resist diseases. We stand and walk better. We derive unusual pleasure for ourselves, with the power to entertain others. As the study is unlimited, our interest cannot fail to increase with each year. It fills our lives as nothing else can do.
"Though everything else may appear shallow and repulsive, even the smallest task in music is so absorbing and carries us so far away from town, country and earth, and all earthly things that it is truly a blessed gift of God."—Mendelsohn.
It is a fact that more people become patients through "boredom" than through fever. It is the monotony of the daily routine and lack of interest which is the root of most of the "illness" and "nerves" of our present day young women.
Try the study of voice culture as an interesting and permanent remedy.