These questions should be an urgent warning to our young female singers
not to sacrifice themselves to any of the modern screaming operas,
unsuited for singing; but to preserve and watch over their voices, and
to guard them from immoderate, continued, and often inartistic exertion;
in fact, to sing always in the voice-register with which nature has
endowed them, and never to shriek; to renounce the present, fashionable,
so-called "singing effects," and the modern scene-screaming, as Jenny
Lind and Henrietta Sontag have always done. Then their voices would
remain useful for the opera, as was formerly the case, from ten to
twenty years; and they would not have to mourn, as is too common, after
a very short time, a feeble, broken voice and departed health.

Let Jenny Lind and Henrietta Sontag be placed as the finest models
before our young, gifted, ambitious singers. They are to be regarded as
miraculous phenomena; especially in our times, when the modern style of
singing has, for reasons difficult to justify, so widely deviated from
the old school which was so fruitful in brilliant results,--that of
Pistocchi, Porpora, and Bernacchi. What could show more clearly the
destructiveness of our present opera style than the sublime beauty of
their singing, combined with their noble, refined, sound voices, such
as may perhaps still be found among you?

* * * * *

The managers of our theatres are in want of tenor singers who can act.
They should consider that tenors who have any voices left have never
learned to act, and tenors who are able to act no longer have any
voices; because, as a rule, they either have studied too little, or have
studied erroneously. Unless the voice has received a correct and fine