Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing

Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art
of Singing,
by Enrico Caruso
and Luisa Tetrazzini

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by Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
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Title: Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing
Author: Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

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CARUSO AND TETRAZZINI ON THE ART OF SINGING
by
ENRICO CARUSO and LUISA TETRAZZINI

Metropolitan Company, Publishers, New York, 1909.

PREFACE
In offering this work to the public the publishers wish to lay before
those who sing or who are about to study singing, the simple,
fundamental rules of the art based on common sense. The two greatest
living exponents of the art of singing--Luisa Tetrazzini and Enrico
Caruso--have been chosen as examples, and their talks on singing have
additional weight from the fact that what they have to say has been
printed exactly as it was uttered, the truths they expound are driven
home forcefully, and what they relate so simply is backed by years of
experience and emphasized by the results they have achieved as the two
greatest artists in the world.
Much has been said about the Italian Method of Singing. It is a
question whether anyone really knows what the phrase means. After all,
if there be a right way to sing, then all other ways must be wrong.
Books have been written on breathing, tone production and what

singers should eat and wear, etc., etc., all tending to make the singer
self-conscious and to sing with the brain rather than with the heart. To
quote Mme. Tetrazzini: "You can train the voice, you can take a raw
material and make it a finished production; not so with the heart."
The country is overrun with inferior teachers of singing; men and
women who have failed to get before the public, turn to teaching
without any practical experience, and, armed only with a few methods,
teach these alike to all pupils, ruining many good voices. Should these
pupils change teachers, even for the better, then begins the weary
undoing of the false method, often with no better result.
To these unfortunate pupils this book is of inestimable value. He or she
could not consistently choose such teachers after reading its pages.
Again the simple rules laid down and tersely and interestingly set forth
not only carry conviction with them, but tear away the veil of mystery
that so often is thrown about the divine art.
Luisa Tetrazzini and Enrico Caruso show what not to do, as well as
what to do, and bring the pupil back to first principles--the art of
singing naturally.

THE ART OF SINGING
By Luisa Tetrazzini
[Illustration: LUISA TETRAZZINI]

LUISA TETRAZZINI
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH OF THE CAREER OF THE
WORLD-FAMOUS PRIMA DONNA
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.
She made her bow to the Florentine opera going public, one of the most
critical in Italy, as Inez, in Meyerbeer's "L'Africaine," and her success
was so pronounced that she was engaged at a salary of $100 a month, a
phenomenal beginning for a young singer. Queen