I wonder if the public ever realizes what this sacrifice means to an
artiste--to a woman.
Of course, there are great recompenses--the thrill that comes with
artistic triumphs--the sensations that accompany achievement--who but
the artist can know what this means--the joy of bringing to life some
great masterpiece?
Music manifests itself in children at a very early age. It is very rare
indeed that it comes to the surface later in life. I was always musical.
Only the media changed--one time it was violin, then piano, then voice.
The dolls of my sisters only annoyed me because I could not tolerate
dolls. They seemed a waste of time to me, and when they had paper
dolls, I would go into the room when nobody was looking and cut the
dolls' heads off. I have never been able to account for my delight in
doing this.
My father was musical. He wanted me to be a musician, but he had little
thought at first of my being a singer. Accordingly, at eight I was
possessed of a fiddle. This meant more to me than all the dolls in the
world. Oh, how I loved that violin, which I could make speak just by
drawing a bow over it! There was something worth while.
I was only as big as a minute, and, of course, as soon as I could play
the routine things of de Beriot, variations and the like, I was
considered one of those abominable things, "an infant prodigy."
I was brought out to play for friends and any musical person who could
stand it. Then I gave a concert, and my father saw the finger of destiny
pointing to my career as a great violinist.
To me the finger of destiny pointed the other way; because I immediately
sickened of the violin and dropped it forever. Yes, I could play now if
I had to, but you probably wouldn't want to hear me.
Ah, but I do play. I play every time I sing. The violin taught me the
need for perfect intonation, fluency in execution, ever so many things.
Then came the piano. Here was a new artistic toy. I worked very hard
with it. My sister and I went back to Aberdeen for a season of private
school, and I kept up my piano until I could play acceptably many of
the best-known compositions, Grieg, Chopin, etc., being my favorites. I
was never a very fine pianist, understand me, but the piano unlocked the
doors to thousands of musical treasure houses--admitted me to musical
literature through the main gate, and has been of invaluable aid to me
in my career. See my fingers, how long and thin they are--of course, I
was a capable pianist--long, supple fingers, combined with my musical
experience gained in violin playing, made that certain.
Then I dropped the piano. Dropped it at once. Its possibilities stood
revealed before me, and they were not to be the limit of my ambitions.
For the girl who hopes to be an operatic "star" there could be nothing
better than a good drilling in violin or piano. The girl has no business
to sing while she is yet a child--and she is that until she is sixteen
or over. Better let her work hard getting a good general education and a
good musical education. The voice will keep, and it will be sweeter and
fresher if it is not overused in childhood.
Once, with my heart set upon becoming a singer, my father fortunately
took me to Mrs. Robinson Duff, of Chicago. To her, my mentor to this
day, I owe much of my vocal success. I was very young and very
emotional, with a long pigtail down my back. At first the work did not
enrapture me, for I could not see the use of spending so much time upon
breathing. Now I realize what it did for me.
What should the girl starting singing avoid? First, let her avoid an
incompetent teacher. There are teachers, for instance, who deliberately
teach the "stroke of the glottis" (coup de glotte).
What is the stroke of the glottis? The lips of the vocal cords in the
larynx are pressed together so that the air becomes compressed behind
them and instead of coming out in a steady, unimpeded stream, it causes
a kind of explosion. Say the word "up" in the throat very forcibly and
you will get the right idea.
This is a most pernicious habit. Somehow, it crept into some phases of
vocal teaching, and has remained. It leads to a constant irritation of
the throat and ruin to the vocal organs.
When I went to Paris, Mrs. Duff took me to many of the leading vocal
teachers of the city, and said, "Now, Mary, I want you to use your own
judgment in picking out a teacher, because if you don't like the teacher
you will not succeed."
Thus we went around from studio to studio. One asked me to do this--to
hum--to make funny, unnatural noises, anything but sing. Finally,
Trabadello, now retired to his country home, really asked me to sing in
a normal, natural way, not as a freak. I said to myself, "This is the
teacher for me." I could not have had a better one.
Look out for teachers with freak methods--ten to one they are making you
one of their experiments. There is nothing that any voice teacher has
ever found superior to giving simple scales and exercises sung upon the
syllables Lah (ah, as in harbor), Leh (eh, as in they), Lee (ee, as in
me). With a good teacher to keep watch over the breathing and the
quality, "what more can one have?"
I have always believed in a great many scales and in a great deal of
singing florid roles in Italian. Italian is inimitable for the singer.
The dulcet, velvet-like character of the language gives something which
nothing else can impart. It does not make any difference whether you
purpose singing in French, German, English, Russian or Soudanese, you
will gain much from exercising in Italian.
Staccato practice is valuable. Here is an exercise which I take nearly
every day of my life:
[Illustration: musical notation]
The staccato must be controlled from the diaphragm, however, and this
comes only after a great deal of work.
Three-quarters of an hour a day practice suffices me. I find it
injurious to practice too long. But I study for hours. Such a role as
_Aphrodite_ I take quietly and sing it over mentally time and time again
without making a sound. I study the harmonies, the nuances, the
phrasing, the breathing, so that when the time for singing it comes I
know it and do not waste my voice by going over it time and again, as
some singers do. In the end I find that I know it better for this kind
of study.
The study of acting has been a very personal matter with me. I have
never been through any courses of study, such as that given in dramatic
schools. This may do for some people, but it would have been impossible
for me. There must be technic in all forms of art, but it has always
seemed to me that acting was one of the arts in which the individual
must make his own technic. I have seen many representatives of the
schools of acting here and abroad. Sometimes their performances, based
upon technical studies of the art, result in superb acting. Again, their
work is altogether indifferent. Technic in acting is more likely to
suppress than to inspire. If acting is not inspired, it is nothing. I
study the human emotions that would naturally underlie the scene in
which I am placed--then I think what one would be most likely to do
under such conditions. When the actual time of appearance on the stage
arrives, I forget all about this and make myself the person of the role.
This is the Italian method rather than the French. There are, to my
mind, no greater actors living than Duse and Zacchona, and they are both
exponents of the natural method that I employ.
Great acting has always impressed me wonderfully. I went from Paris to
London repeatedly to see Beerbohm Tree in his best roles. Sir Herbert
was not always uniformly fine, but he was a great actor and I learned
much from watching him. Once I induced Debussy to make the trip to see
him act. Debussy was delighted.
Debussy! Ah, what a rare genius--my greatest friend in Art! Everything
he wrote we went over together. He was a terribly exacting master. Few
people in America realize what a transcendent pianist he was. The piano
seemed to be thinking, feeling, vibrating while he was at the keyboard.
Time and again we went over his principal works, note for note. Now and
then he would stop and clasp his hands over his face in sudden silence,
repeating, "It is all wrong--it is all wrong." But he was too good a
teacher to let it go at that. He could tell me exactly what was wrong
and how to remedy it. When I first sang for him, at the time when they
were about to produce _Pelleas and Melisande_ at the Opera Comique, I
thought that I had not pleased him. But I learned later that he had said
to M. Carre, the director: "Don't look for anyone else." From that time
he and his family became my close friends. The fatalistic side of our
meeting seemed to interest him very much. "To think," he used to say,
"that you were born in Aberdeen, Scotland, lived in America all those
years and should come to Paris to create my _Melisande_!"
As I have said, Debussy was a gorgeous pianist. He could play with the
greatest delicacy and could play in the leonine fashion of Rubinstein.
He was familiar with Beethoven, Bach, Handel and the classics, and was
devoted to them. Wagner he could not abide. He called him a "griffe
papier"--a scribbler. He thought that he had no importance in the world
of music, and to mention Wagner to him was like waving a red flag
before a bull.
It is difficult to account for such an opinion. Wagner, to me, is the
great tone colorist, the master of orchestral wealth and dramatic
intensity. Sometimes I have been so Wagner-hungry that I have not known
what to do. For years I went every year to Munich to see the wonderful
performances at the Prinzregenten Theater.
In closing let me say that it seems to me a great deal of the failure
among young singers is that they are too impatient to acquire the "know
how." They want to blossom out on the first night as great prima donnas,
without any previous experience. How ridiculous this is! I worked for a
whole year at the Opera Comique, at $100 a month, singing such a trying
opera as _Louise_ two and three times a week. When they raised me to
$175 a month I thought that I was rich, and when $400 a month came, my
fortune had surely been made! All this time I was gaining precious
experience. It could not have come to me in any other way. As I have
said, the natural school--the natural school, like that of the
Italians--stuffed as it is with glorious red blood instead of the white
bones of technic in the misunderstood sense, was the only possible
school for me. If our girls would only stop hoping to make a debut at
$1,000 a night and get down to real hard work, the results would come
much quicker and there would be fewer broken hearts.