Part 28 (1/2)
The worst thing Sbriglia had to contend with was the obtuseness of people. They did not know when they were doing well or ill, and would not believe him when he told them. I remember being there one day while a young Canadian girl was making tones for the master. She had a good voice and could have made a really fine effect if she could only have heard herself with her brain. After he had been working with her for a time, she sang a delightful note properly placed.
”Good!” exclaimed Sbriglia.
”That was lovely,” I put in.
”_That?_ I wouldn't sing like that for anything! It sounded like an old woman's voice!” cried the girl, quite amazed.
Sbriglia threw up his hands in a frenzy and ordered her out of the house. So that was an end of her as far as he was concerned.
Sbriglia really loved to teach. It was a genuine joy to him to put the finis.h.i.+ng touches on a voice; to do those things for it that, apparently, the Creator had not had time to do. I know one singer who, when complimented upon his vast improvement, replied without the slightest intention of impiety:
”Yes, I am singing well now, thanks to Sbriglia,--and, of course, _le bon Dieu_!” he added as an after-thought.
Everyone knows what Sbriglia did for Jean de Reszke, turning him from an unsuccessful baritone into the foremost tenor of the world. Sbriglia first met the Polish singer at some Paris party, where de Reszke told him that he was discouraged, that his career as a baritone had not been a fortunate one, and that he had about made up his mind to give it all up and leave the stage. He was a rich man and did not sing for a living like most professionals. Sbriglia had heard him sing. Said he:
”M. de Reszke, you are not a baritone.”
”I am coming to that conclusion myself,” said Monsieur ruefully.
”No, you are not a baritone,” repeated Sbriglia. ”You are a tenor.”
Jean de Reszke laughed. A tenor? He? But it was absurd!
Nevertheless Sbriglia was calmly a.s.sured; and he was the greatest master of singing in France, if not in the world. After a little conversation, he convinced M. de Reszke sufficiently, at least, to give the new theory a chance.
”You need not pay me anything,” said the great teacher to the young man.
”Not one franc will I take from you until I have satisfied you that my judgment is correct. Study with me for six months only and then I will leave it to you--and the world!”
That was the beginning of the course of study which launched Jean de Reszke upon his extraordinarily prosperous and brilliant career.
Speaking of Sbriglia leads my thoughts from the study of singing in general to the struggle of young singers, first, for education, and, second, for recognition. I would like to impress upon those who think of trying to make a career or who would like to make one the benefit to be derived from reading the twenty-third and twenty-fourth chapters of George Eliot's _Daniel Deronda_, in which she makes clear how much early environment counts. There must have been some musical atmosphere, even if not of an advanced or educated kind. Music must be absorbed with the air one breathes and the food one eats, so as to form part of the blood and tissue.
It is sad to see the number of girls with the idea that they are possessed of great gifts just ready to be developed by a short period of study, after which they will blossom out into successful singers.
Injudicious friends--absolutely without judgment or musical discrimination--are responsible for the cruel disillusions that so frequently follow. I would like to cry out to them to reject the thought; or only to entertain it when encouraged by those capable by experience or training of truly judging their gifts. Many and many a girl comes out of a household where the highest musical knowledge has been the hand-organ in the street, and believes that she is going to take the world by storm. She is prepared to save and scrimp and struggle to go upon the stage when she really should be stopping at home, ironing the clothes and was.h.i.+ng the dishes allotted her by a discriminating and judicious Providence. Said Klesner to Gwendolen who wants to go on the stage in _Daniel Deronda_:
You have exercised your talents--you recite--you sing--from the drawing-room _Standpunkt_. My dear _Fraulein_, you must unlearn all that. You have not yet conceived what excellence is. You must unlearn your mistaken admirations. You must know what you have to strive for, and then you must subdue your mind and body to unbroken discipline. Your _mind_, I say. For you must not be thinking of celebrity. Put that candle out of your eyes and look only at excellence. You would, of course, earn nothing. You could get no engagement for a long while. You would need money for yourself and your family....
A mountebank's child who helps her father to earn s.h.i.+llings when she is six years old--a child that inherits a singing throat from a long line of choristers and learns to sing as it learns to talk--has a likelier beginning. Any great achievement in acting or in music grows with the growth. Whenever an artist has been able to say, ”I came, I saw, I conquered,” it has been at the end of patient practice. Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline. Singing and acting, like the fine dexterity of the juggler with his cups and b.a.l.l.s, require a shaping of the organs toward a finer and finer certainty of effect. Your muscles--your whole frame--must go like a watch, true, true, true, to a hair. That is the work of springtime, before habits have been determined.
This demonstrates what I cannot emphasise too heartily--the impossibility of taking people out of their normal environment and making anything worth while of them. There is a place in the world for everybody and, if everybody would stay in that place, there would be less confusion and fewer melancholy misfits. Singing is not merely vocal. It is spiritual. One must be _in_ music in some way; must hear it often, or, even, hear it talked about. Merely hearing it talked about gives one a chance to absorb some musical ideas while one's mental att.i.tude is being moulded. Studying in cla.s.ses supplies the musical atmosphere to a certain extent; and so does hearing other people sing, or reading biographies of musicians. All these are better than nothing--much better--and yet they can never take the place of really musical surroundings in childhood. Being brought up in a household where famous composers are known, loved, and discussed, where the best music is played on the piano and where certain critical standards are a part of the intellectual life of the inmates is a large musical education in itself. The young student will absorb thus more real musical feeling, and judgment, and knowledge, than in spending years at a conservatory.
I have often and often received letters asking for advice and begging me to hear the voices of girls who have been told they have talent. It is a heart-breaking business. About one in sixty has had something resembling a voice and then, ten chances to one, she has not been in a position to cultivate herself. It is difficult to tell a girl that a woman must have many things besides a voice to make a success on the stage. It seems so--well!--so _conceited_--to say to her:
”My poor child, you must have presence and personality; good teeth and a knowledge of how to dress; grace of manner, dramatic feeling, high intelligence, and an apt.i.tude for foreign languages besides a great many other essentials that are too numerous to mention but that you will discover fast enough if you try to go ahead without them!”
An impulsive and warm-hearted friend was visiting me once when I received a letter from a young woman whom I will call ”E. H.,” asking permission to come and sing for me. I read the note in despair and threw it over to my friend.
”What are you going to do about it?” she asked, after she had glanced through it.
”Nothing. The girl has no talent.”