Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing

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Enrico Caruso. Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing

PREFACE

LUISA TETRAZZINI

Introductory Sketch of the Career of the World-Famous Prima Donna

Breath Control The Foundation of Singing

The Mastery of the Tongue

Tone Emission and Attack

Facial Expression and Mirror Practice

Appreciative Attitude and Critical Attitude

The Career of Enrico Caruso

How a Neapolitan Mechanic's Son Became the World's Greatest Tenor

From a Personal Viewpoint

The Voice and Tone Production

Faults to be Corrected

Good Diction a Requisite

Pet Superstitions of Great Singers

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Luisa Tetrazzini, the most famous Italian coloratura soprano of the day, declares that she began to sing before she learned to talk. Her parents were not musical, but her elder sister, now the wife of the eminent conductor Cleofante Campanini, was a public singer of established reputation, and her success roused her young sister's ambition to become a great artist. Her parents were well to do, her father having a large army furnishing store in Florence, and they did not encourage her in her determination to become a prima donna. One prima donna, said her father, was enough for any family.

Luisa did not agree with him. If one prima donna is good, she argued, why would not two be better? So she never desisted from her importunity until she was permitted to become a pupil of Professor Coccherani, vocal instructor at the Lycée. At this time she had committed to memory more than a dozen grand opera rôles, and at the end of six months the professor confessed that he could do nothing more for her voice; that she was ready for a career.

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Like everything else in singing, you want to learn this gradually. Never neglect it, because it is the very foundation of your art. But don't try to develop a diaphragm expansion of five inches in two weeks.

Indeed, it is not the expansion that you are working for.

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