Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1910 — THRIVE ON AMERICANS. [ARTICLE]

THRIVE ON AMERICANS.

**art» Vocal Trainers Tarn Ont Comparatively Few Great Artists. The methods and evidenced result* of French vocal training cannot be sc pleasantly regarded. As a people, we have suffered too great a multitude of unfortunate experiences to let the situation go without plain speaking that the American girl may know, as she too often has not known, true conditions in Paris, says the Woman’s Home Companion. it is estimated that there are 5,000 vocal teachers in Paris; they manage to thrive, and mainly on the money of-Americans. The number of really great singers the French teachers have sent us in return for the outlay of many thousands is practicaly nil. The two most distinguished exceptions are Miss Mary Garden and M. Renaud, of The Manhattan Opera House. But, again, the great success of both artists is due mainly to their admirable acting. Of those achelving notable success-, es at the Metropolitan Opera House and studying in Paris, Mme. Melba, Mme. Eames and Mme. Calve made their debuts from the classroom of Mme. Marches!, a German, while M. Plan con studied with Sbriglia, an Italian, who made Jean de Reszke a tenor. Yet the procession to French teachers grows each year in volume, unaffected by any thought of discouraging statistics. A new* arrival in Paris will calmly assert, without questioning or experience, that it is the only place In the world to study; go Out the next morning and arrange for lessons with a teacher whose name she had heard or read, or possibly engage hours with a stranger of whom she has done neither, but whose expressed opinion of her voice is more flattering than that of any other she may have visited. The old fetich that every teacher of music who is a foreigner must consequently be a good teacher, which long ago vanished in America, appears still to hold sway with our country people once in Paris. To be known there as vocal teachers .seems but too often an all-sufficient recommendation.