In one respect Europe is unquestionably superior to America for the
vocal student. The student who wants to sing in opera will find in
Europe ten opportunities for gaining experience to one here. While we
have a few more opera companies than twenty-five years ago, it is still
a great task to secure even an opening. Americans, outside of the great
cities, do not seem to be especially inclined toward opera. They will
accept a little of it when it is given to them by a superb company like
the Metropolitan. In New York we find a public more cosmopolitan than in
any other city of the world, with the possible exception of London. In
immediate ancestry it is more European than American, and naturally
opera becomes a great public demand. Seats sell at fabulous prices and
the houses are crowded. Next comes opera at popular prices; and we have
one or two very good companies giving that with success. Then there is
the opera in America's other cosmopolitan center, Chicago, where many
world-famed artists appear. After that, opera in America is hardly worth
mentioning. What chance has the student? Only one who for years has been
uniformed in a black dress suit and backed into the curve of the grand
piano in a recital hall can know what it means to get out on the
operatic stage, in those fantastic clothes, walk around, act, sing and
at the same time watch the conductor with his ninety men. Only he can
know what the difference between singing in concert and on the operatic
stage really is. Yet old opera singers who enter the recital field
invariably say that it is far harder to get up alone in a large hall and
become the whole performance, aided and abetted only by an able
accompanist, than it is to sing in opera.
The recital has the effect of preserving the fineness of many operatic
voices. Modern opera has ruined dozens of fine vocal organs because of
the tremendous strain made upon them and the tendency to neglect vocal
art for dramatic impression.
If there were more of the better _singing_ in opera, such as one hears
from Mr. Caruso, there would be less comment upon opera as a bastard
art. Operatic work is very exhilarating. The difference between concert
and opera for the singer is that between oatmeal porridge and an old
vintage champagne. There is no time at the Metropolitan for raw singers.
The works in the repertoire must be known so well in the singing and the
acting that they may be put on perfectly with the least possible
rehearsals. Therefore, the singer has no time for routine. The lack of a
foreign name will keep no American singer out of the Metropolitan; but
the lack of the ability to save the company hundreds of dollars through
needless waits at rehearsals will.