A good legato can only be acquired after an enormous amount of thorough
training. The tendency to be careless is human. Habits of carefulness
come only after much drill. The object of the student and the teacher
should be to make a singer--not to acquire a scanty repertoire of a few
arias. Very few of the operas I now sing were learned in my student
days. That was not the object of my teacher. The object was to prepare
me to take up anything from _Martha_ to _Rosenkavalier_ and know how to
study it myself in the quickest and most thorough manner. Woe be to the
pupil of the teacher who spends most of the time in teaching songs,
arias, etc., before the pupil is really ready to study such things.