go at that. He could tell me exactly what was wrong
and how to remedy it. When I first sang for him, at the time when they
were about to produce _Pelleas and Melisande_ at the Opera Comique, I
thought that I had not pleased him. But I learned later that he had said
to M. Carre, the director: "Don't look for anyone else." From that time
he and his family became my close friends. The fatalistic side of our
meeting seemed to interest him very much. "To think," he used to say,
"that you were born in Aberdeen, Scotland, lived in America all those
years and should come to Paris to create my _Melisande_!"

As I have said, Debussy was a gorgeous pianist. He could play with the
greatest delicacy and could play in the leonine fashion of Rubinstein.
He was familiar with Beethoven, Bach, Handel and the classics, and was
devoted to them. Wagner he could not abide. He called him a "griffe
papier"--a scribbler. He thought that he had no importance in the world
of music, and to mention Wagner to him was like waving a red flag
before a bull.

It is difficult to account for such an opinion. Wagner, to me, is the
great tone colorist, the master of orchestral wealth and dramatic
intensity. Sometimes I have been so Wagner-hungry that I have not known
what to do. For years I went every year to Munich to see the wonderful
performances at the Prinzregenten Theater.

In closing let me say that it seems to me a great deal of the failure
among young singers is that they are too impatient to acquire the "know
how." They want to blossom out on the first night as great prima donnas,
without any previous experience. How ridiculous this is! I worked for a
whole year at the Opera Comique, at $100 a month, singing such a trying
opera as _Louise_ two and three times a week. When they raised me to
$175 a month I thought that I was rich, and when $400 a month came, my
fortune had surely been made! All this time I was gaining precious
experience. It could not have come to me in any other way. As I have
said, the natural school--the natural school, like that of the
Italians--stuffed as it is with glorious red blood instead of the white
bones of technic in the misunderstood sense, was the only possible
school for me. If our girls would only stop hoping to make a debut at
$1,000 a night and get down to real hard work, the results would come
much quicker and there would be fewer broken hearts.

MME. ALMA GLUCK

BIOGRAPHICAL

Mme. Alma Gluck was