In European countries there are innumerable small companies capable of
giving good opera which the people enjoy quite as thoroughly as the
metropolitan audiences of the world enjoy the opera which commands the
best singers of the times. For years these small opera companies have
been the training schools of the great singers. Not to have gone through
such a school was as damaging an admission as that of not having gone
through a college would be to a college professor applying for a new
position. Lilli Lehmann, Schumann-Heink, Ruffo, Campanini, Jenny Lind,
Patti, all are graduates of these schools of practice.
In America there seems to have existed for years a kind of prejudice,
bred of ignorance, against all opera companies except those employing
all-star casts in the biggest theatres in the biggest cities. This
existed, despite the fact that these secondary opera companies often put
on opera that was superior to the best that was to be heard in some
Italian, German and French cities which possessed opera companies that
stood very high in the estimation of Americans who had never heard them.
It was once actually the case that the fact that a singer had once sung
in a smaller opera company prevented her from aspiring to sing in a
great opera company. America, however, has become very much better
informed and much more independent in such matters, and our opera goers
are beginning to resemble European audiences in that they let their ears
and their common sense determine what is best rather than their
prejudices and their conventions regarding reputation. It was actually
the case at one time in America that a singer with a great reputation
could command a large audience, whereas a singer of far greater ability
and infinitely better voice might be shut out because she had once sung
in an opera company not as pretentious as those in the big cities. This
seemed very comic indeed to many European singers, who laughed in their
coat sleeves over the real situation.
In the first place, the small companies in many cities would provide
more singers with opportunities for training and public appearances. The
United States now has two or three major opera companies. Count up on
your fingers the greatest number of singers who could be accommodated
with parts: only once or twice in a decade does the young singer, at the
age when the best formative work must be done, have a chance to attain
the leading roles. If we had in America ten or twenty smaller opera
companies of real merit, the chances would be greatly multiplied.
The first thing that the singer has to fight is stage fright. No matter
how well you may know a role in a studio, unless you are a very
extraordinary person you are likely to take months in acquiring the
stage freedom and ease in working before an audience. There is only one
cure for stage fright, and that is to appear continually until it wears
off. Many deserving singers have lost their great chances because they
have depended upon what they have learned in the studio, only to find
that when they went before a great and critical audience their ability
was suddenly reduced to 10 per cent., if not to zero. Even after years
of practice and experience in great European opera houses where I
appeared repeatedly before royalty, the reputation of the Metropolitan
Opera House in New York was so great that at the time I made my debut
there I was so afflicted by stage fright that my voice was actually
reduced to one-half of its force and my other abilities accordingly.
This is the truth, and I am glad to have young singers know it as it
emphasizes my point.
Imagine what the effect would have been upon a young singer who had
never before sung in public on the stage. Footlight paralysis is one of
the most terrifying of all acute diseases and there is no cure for it
but experience.