or _Bruennhilde_ will get an engagement
ten times sooner than a good _Lucia_; and young vocalists whose voices
have not sufficient volume and power to cope with German dramatic
music, will do well to devote their attention to the better class of
French operas, for which there is a growing demand, as the French
style has always been much more like the German than like the Italian,
owing to the great attention paid by French composers, especially
since the days of Gluck, to vigorous declamation and distinct
enunciation. Wagner especially recommends the works of the older
French schools as a preparation for his own more difficult operas.

Director Stanton, of the Metropolitan Opera House, in New York, is
obliged every summer to make a trip to Germany and look about for
dramatic singers wherewith to replenish his casts. As a number of
American singers have already won fame here and abroad, the time no
doubt will come when he will be able to find the dramatic singers he
needs at home, and when opera in English will have supplanted foreign
opera, so far as the language is concerned. But until that happy epoch
arrives every aspirant to operatic honors cannot be too strongly urged
to begin his or her studies by learning the French and German
languages. Almost all the greatest singers of the century have been
able not only to sing but to speak in several languages. Above all
things, students of song should learn to speak their own language. Mr.
H.C. Deacon remarks that "no nation in the civilized world speaks its
language so abominably as the English.... Familiar conversation is
carried on in inarticulate smudges of sound which are allowed to pass
current for something, as worn-out shillings are accepted as
representatives of twelvepence.... When English people begin to study
singing, they are astonished to find that they have never learned to
speak."

Mr. Deacon's strictures do not apply in all their force to Americans,
for the average American speaks English more distinctly than the
average Englishman; yet there is room for vast improvement in the
enunciation of our singers. Now, the great value of the German style
to English students lies in this, that it emphasizes above all things
the importance of correct and distinct speech in song. Julius Hey, of
Munich, who has just published a vocal method which will mark an epoch
in the teaching of singing, devotes the whole of his first volume to
an analysis of the elements of spee