"You can well believe it is far more difficult to sing a recital program
than to do an operatic rôle. In the recital you are absolutely alone,
and entirely responsible for your effect on the audience. You must be
able to express every variety of emotion and feeling, must make them
realize the difference between sorrow and happiness, revenge or disdain;
in short, make them, for the moment, experience these things. The artist
who can best vivify these varying emotions must have temperament. On the
piano, you may hear players who express sentiment, feeling, fine
discrimination in tone color and shading; but comparatively few possess
real temperament. There is great difference between that quality and
sentiment. The one can be learned, to a certain extent; but temperament
is one's very life and soul, and is bound to sweep everything before it.
Of this one thing I am very sure; the singer cannot express all these
emotions without feeling them to the full during performance. I always
feel every phrase I sing--live it. That is why, after a long and
exhausting program, I am perfectly limp and spent. For I have given all
that was in me. Friends of Sara Bernhardt say that after a performance,
they would find her stretched prone on a couch in her dressing room,
scarcely able to move or speak. The strain of a public appearance, when
one gives one's heart's blood, is beyond words"; and Madame's upturned
face and expressive gesture denoted how keenly alive she was to this
experience.
After a little pause, I said: "Let us come down to earth, while you tell
me just how you study. No doubt you do some daily technical practice."