use. As a vocal teacher, Wagner has perhaps never had an
equal. A few words from him regarding tone emission, breathing, or
phrasing, have often sufficed to show to a singer that a passage which
he had considered unsingable, was really the easiest thing in the
world, if only the poetic sense were properly grasped and the breath
economized. It is difficult to realize how much of their art and
popularity the greatest dramatic singers of the period owe to Wagner's
personal instruction. Materna, Malten, Brandt, Tichatschek, Schnorr
von Carolsfeld, Niemann, Vogl, Winkelmann, Betz, Scaria, Reichmann,
and many others have had the benefit of his advice; and if Wagner
could have carried out his plans of establishing a college of dramatic
singing at Bayreuth--a plan which was frustrated by the lack of
funds--the cause of dramatic art would have gained immeasurably. We
speak with scornful contempt of the Viennese of a former generation,
who allowed a rare genius like Schubert to starve; but posterity will
look back with quite as great astonishment on the sluggishness of a
generation which did not eagerly accept the offer of the greatest
dramatic composer of all times, to instruct gratuitously a number of
pupils in his own style and those of Gluck, Mozart, and Weber.

Leaving out of consideration the instructions which they personally
received from Wagner, the greatest dramatic singers of the time may be
regarded as self-made men and women. Experience taught them their art,
other teacher they had none; for it is only within a few years that a
few teachers have begun to realize that the old methods of instruction
are partly incorrect, and partly insufficient for the demands of
contemporary art. Such teachers as Mme. Viardot-Garcia and Mme.
Marchesi have done much good, and trained many excellent lyric
vocalists; but Mme. Marchesi herself admits that the great demand
to-day is for dramatic, and not for lyric, singers. Formerly, it was
the _bravura_ singer who bought dukedoms with his shekels; to-day,
with the solitary exception of Patti, it is the _dramatic_ soprano or
tenor that gets from $500 to $1,000 a night. When will teachers and
pupils wake up and recognize the new situation? When will American
girls cease flocking by the hundreds to Milan to learn such roles as
_Lucia_ or _Amina_, for which there is now no demand, either in Europe
or America, if we except the wild Western audiences to which Emma
Abbott caters. A good _Elsa_