Let me give you one of my greatest secrets. Like all secrets, it is
perfectly simple and entirely rational. _Never give the public all you
have._ That is, the singer owes it to herself never to go beyond the
boundaries of her vocal possibilities. The singer who sings to the
utmost every time is like the athlete who exhausts himself to the state
of collapse. This is the only way in which I can account for what the
critics term "the remarkable preservation" of my own voice. I have been
singing for years in all parts of the musical world, growing richer in
musical and human experience and yet my voice to-day feels as fresh and
as dear as when I was in my teens. I have never strained, I have never
continued roles that proved unsuited to me, I have never sung when I
have not been in good voice.
This leads to another very important point. I have often had students
ask me how they can determine whether their teachers are giving them the
kind of method or instruction they should have. I have always replied,
"If you feel tired after a lesson, if your throat is strained after a
little singing, if you feel exhausted, your teacher is on the wrong
track, no matter what he labels his method or how wonderful his
credentials are."
Isn't that very simple? I have known young girls to go on practicing
until they couldn't speak. Let them go to a physician and have the
doctor show them by means of a laryngoscope just how tender and
delicate their vocal organs are. I call them my "little bits of
cotton"; they seem so frail and so tiny. Do you wonder that I guard them
carefully? This practice consists of the simplest imaginable
exercises--sustained scales, chromatic scales and trills. It is not so
much _what_ one practices, but _how_ one practices.