The art of vocalization is retarding the advance of the modern music drama. This is a simple statement of a fact although, doubtless, you are as accustomed as I am to hearing it expressed a rebours. How many times have I read that the art of singing is in its decadence, that soon there would not be one artist left fitted to deliver vocal music in public! The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe wrote something of the sort in 1825, for he found the great Catalani but a sorry travesty of his early favourites, Pacchierotti and Banti. I protest against this misconception. Any one who asserts that there are laws which govern singing, physical, scientific laws, must pay court to other ears than mine. For twenty years I have heard this same man shouting in the marketplace that a piece without action was not a play (usually the drama he referred to had more real action than that which decorates the progress of Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model), that a composition without melody (meaning a creation by Richard Wagner, Robert Franz, or even Edvard Grieg) was not
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The New Art of the Singer
