More voices collapse from over-practice and more careers collapse from
under-work than from anything else. The girl who hopes to become a prima
donna will dream of her work morning, noon and night. Nothing can take
it out of her mind. She will seek to study every imaginable thing that
could in any way contribute to her equipment. There is so much to learn
that she must work hard to learn all. Even now I study pretty regularly
two hours a day, but I rarely sing more than a few minutes. I hum over
my new roles with my accompanist, Frank La Forge, and study them in that
way. It was to such methods as this that Marchesi attributed the
wonderful longevity of the voices of her best-known pupils. When they
followed the advice of the dear old maestra their voices lasted a long,
long time. Her vocal exercises were little more than scales sung very
slowly, single, sustained tones repeated time and again until her
critical ear was entirely satisfied, and then arpeggios. After that came
more complicated technical drills to prepare the pupil for the fioriture
work demanded in the more florid operas. At the base of all, however,
were the simplest kind of exercises. Through her discriminating sense of
tone quality, her great persistence and her boundless enthusiasm, she
used these simple vocal materials with a wizardry that produced great
_prime donne_.