Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1895 — Why Opera Is Expensive. [ARTICLE]

Why Opera Is Expensive.

People sometimes complain that the opera is expensive. Why should It not be? Paintings by Daubigny, Rousseau, Vibert, Cazin, Jean Beraud, Detti, etc., are expensive, because they are excellent, and the possessors of the techniquerequiredtoproduce them are few in number and know their own value. There are very few composers who are able to produce really great operas, and they must be well paid. Then how many vocal artists are there in the known world who are competent to interpret the music? Do we appreciate the enormous expenditure of time and effort, the long, laborious, uninterrupted training which the singers must go through with, before audiences will listen to them? This species of training, too, demands the sternest and most conscientious personal sacrifices. There must be often a Spartan regimen, great forfeitures of social pleasures, daily and unceasing study and practice, no matter at what cost of weariness, and often irksome labor. All this must be accomplished while the golden hours of youth are fleeting, and without the sure promise of ultimate success as an incentive. The attainment of renown as a singer is like the high prize in a lottery, and after all the aspirant may draw a blank. Even when fame is achieved, and in the great cities of both, hemispheres the brow of the singer is crowned with laurels, and opulent managers outbid each other in order to secure engagements, some unforeseen accident may atonce destroy the entire fabric of availability so carefully constructed, of genius, muscal skill and capacity, dramatic fervor, and conscientious devotion to art. Then the voice is silenced forever, and the singer lives only in memory, while the income stops. Even at the best the career of the vocalist is brief. The great lawyer or physician often touches his zenith at threescore, or perhaps threescore and ten; a Gladstone retires only from choice at 85; a Bismarck is never greater than in old age; but what of the singer when inexorable time attacks the vocal organs?—Mme. Melba, in Lippincott’s Monthly.