itals.

But be sure that the voice is well placed before trying any of this sort
of work, and never attempt to sing a role above your powers in the
earlier stage of your career, which otherwise may be compromised
permanently.

One more bit of advice in closing. The best sort of lesson possible is
to go often to the opera and note well the methods of the great artists.
This personal example is worth more and is more illuminating than many
precepts.

This is not so much that any form of imitation may be attempted as to
teach the would-be artist how to present at his best all those telling
qualities with which he may be endowed. It is the best of schools.

Pet Superstitions of Great Singers

The most visible phase of the opera singer's life when he or she is in
view of the public on the stage is naturally the one most intimately
connected in the minds of the majority of people with the singer's
personality, and yet there are many happenings, amusing or tragic, from
the artist's point of view, which, though often seen, are as often not
realized in their true significance by the audience in front of the
orchestra. One might naturally think that a singer who has been
appearing for years on the operatic stage in many lands would have
overcome or outgrown that bane of all public performers, stage fright.
Yet such is far from the case, for it seems as though the greater the
artistic temperament the more truly the artist feels and the more of
himself he puts into the music he sings the greater his nervousness
beforehand. The latter is of course augmented if the performance is a
first night and the opera has as yet been untried before a larger
public.

This advance state of miserable physical tension is the portion of all
great singers alike, though in somewhat varying degrees, and it is
interesting to note the forms it assumes with different people. In many
it is shown by excessive irritability and the disposal to pick quarrels
with anyone who comes in contact with them. This is an unhappy time for
the luckless "dressers," wig man and stage hands, or even fellow artists
who encounter such singers before their first appearance in the evening.
Trouble is the portion of all such.

In other artists the state of mind is indicated by a stern set
countenance and a ghastly pallor, while still others become slightly
hysterical, laugh uproariously at nothing or burst into weeping. I have
seen a big six-foot bass singer, ve