beth). But, as music, it becomes simply impossible
to be executed, so frightful is the strain on the energies of her who
is to present the heroine. Compared with this character, Beethoven's
Leonora, Weber's Euryanthe, are only so much child's play." This is
topsy-turvy reasoning, of course, but at the same time it is
suggestive.

The modern orchestra dug a deeper breach between the two schools.
Wagner called upon the singer to express powerful emotion, passionate
feeling, over a great body of sound, nay, in many instances, _against_
a great body of sound. (It is significant that Wagner himself admitted
that it was a singer [Madame Schroeder-Devrient] who revealed to him
the possibilities of dramatic singing. He boasted that he was the only
one to learn the lesson. "She was the first artist," writes H. T.
Finck, "who fully revealed the fact that in a dramatic opera there may
be situations where _characteristic_ singing is of more importance
than _beautiful_ singing.") It is small occasion for wonder that
singers began to bark. Indeed they nearly expired under the strain of
trying successfully to mingle Porpora and passion. According to W. F.
Apthorp, Max Alvary once said that, considering the emotional
intensity of music and situations, the constant co-operation of the
surging orchestra, and, most of all, the unconquerable feeling of the
reality of it all, it was a wonder that singing actors did not go
stark mad, before the very faces of the audience, in parts like
Tristan or Siegfried.... The critics, however, were inexorable; they
stood by their guns. There was but one way to sing the new music and
that was the way of Bernacchi and Pistocchi. In time, by dint of
persevering, talking night and day, writing day and night, they
convinced the singer. The music drama developed but the singer was
held in his place. Some artists, great geniuses, of course, made the
compromise successfully.... Jean de Reszke, for example, and Lilli
Lehmann, who said to H. E. Krehbiel ("Chapters of Opera"): "It is
easier to sing all three Brunnhildes than one Norma. You are so
carried away by the dramatic emotion, the action, and the scene, that
you do not have to think how to sing the words. That comes of itself"
... but they made the further progress of the composer more difficult
thereby; music remained merely pretty. The successors of these supple
singers even learned to sing Richard Strauss with broad cantilena
effects. As for Puccini! At