he year. It is my duty to my audience. The woman
who comes to a country Chautauqua and brings her baby with her and
perchance nurses the little one during the concert gets a great deal
closer to my heart than the stiff-backed aristocrat who has just left a
Pekingese spaniel outside of the opera house door in a $6000.00
limousine. That little country woman expects to hear the singer at her
best. Therefore, I practice just as carefully on the day of the
Chautauqua concert as I would if I were to sing _Ortrud_ the same night
at the Metropolitan in New York.

American audiences are becoming more and more discriminating. Likewise
they are more and more responsive. As an American citizen, I am devoted
to all the ideals of the new world. They have accepted me in the most
whole-souled manner and I am grateful to the land of my adoption.

THE ADVANTAGE OF AN EARLY TRAINING

Whether or not the voice keeps in prime condition to-day depends largely
upon the early training of the singer. If that training is a good one, a
sound one, a sensible one, the voice will, with regular practice, keep
in good condition for a remarkably long time. The trouble is that the
average student is too impatient in these days to take time for a
sufficient training. The voice at the outstart must be trained lightly
and carefully. There must not be the least strain. I believe that at the
beginning two lessons a week should be sufficient. The lessons should
not be longer than one-half an hour and the home practice should not
exceed at the start fifty minutes a day. Even then the practice should
be divided into two periods. The young singer should practice _mezza
voce_, which simply means nothing more or less than "half voice." Never
practice with full voice unless singing under the direction of a
well-schooled teacher with years of practical singing experience.

It is easy enough to shout. Some of the singers in modern opera seem to
employ a kind of megaphone method. They stand stock still on the stage
and bawl out the phrases as though they were announcing trains in a
railroad terminal. Such singers disappear in a few years. Their voices
seem torn to shreds. The reason is that they have not given sufficient
attention to _bel canto_ in their early training. They seem to forget
that voice must first of all be beautiful. _Bel canto_,--beautiful
singing,--not the singing of meaningless Italian phrases, as so many
insist, but the glorious _bel canto_ whic