E-Book Overview
Mathilde Marchesi (1821–1913) was probably the most renowned singing teacher of the late nineteenth century. Herself the pupil of the great Manuel Garcia the Second and the associate of the unsurpassable divas of the middle nineteenth century, she also linked the traditional bel canto teaching method to the beginning of the twentieth century. Early in her career her work was praised enthusiastically by Rossini, who was for a time officially in charge of voice training in France; and toward the end of her career she prepared such superstars as Melba, Calvé, Eames, Aida, and others. This volume embodies Madame Marchesi's "vocal alphabet," or basic instructions and exercises that formed the voices of her great pupils. An introductory text discusses breathing, attack, registers, and similar matters, while the remainder of the book contains many exercises that teach voice management and projections. Marchesi's book is today even more important than when it first appeared, for it offers the basis for a construction of the bel canto training system. At the time the book appeared, the bel canto system had gone out of fashion in favor of more modern schools that seemed to offer more rapid maturation, voice volume, and dramatics. Today, a more realistic reevaluation has revealed that the bel canto system gave the singer much longer performing life, a more pleasing voice, and far greater musical ability. As Philip Miller states in his introduction, "a solidity, a sure technical mastery, an even scale with no register break . . . strong, even and secure trills, their coloratura masterly." In addition, the resurgence of interest in early-nineteenth-century opera renders a work like Marchesi's indispensable to the modern singer.
E-Book Content
Bel Canto: A Theoretical & Practical Vocal Method Mathilde Marchesi with a new introduction by PHILIP L. MILLER FORMER CHIEF OF THE MUSIC DIVISION, NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Dover Publications, Inc., New York
To my dear daughter, Blanche Marchesi
Copyright © 1970 by Dover Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
This Dover edition, first published in 1970, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Enoch & Sons, Ltd., London, n.d. A new introduction has been written for the present edition by Philip L. Miller.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-116817 International Standard Book Number ISBN-13: 978-0-486-17286-6 Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation 22315918 www.doverpublications.com
INTRODUCTION TO THE DOVER EDITION One day in 1886 a young Australian named Mrs. Mitchell made an appointment to sing for the great Mme. Marchesi in Paris. She had come up to London not long before, had given a recital in Princes’ Hall, which the critic Herman Klein later remembered as “decidedly amateurish and mediocre/’ and had sung for Sir Arthur Sullivan, whose best encouragement was that after a year’s study he might be able to offer her a role in The Mikado. Marchesi’s reaction was different. “Salvatore!” she called to her husband, “at last I have found a star.” She then assured the young woman, “If you are serious and can study with me for one year, I can make something extraordinary of you.” As everyone knows, the debut of Nellie Melba in Rigoletto at the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, 12 October 1887, was indeed extraordinary, for it launched one of the most sensational musical careers of all time. Melba’s studies with Marchesi did not stop with her debut; she never lost contact until the end of the teacher’s life. By that time her own name was a long established household word. Her career finally reached its end in a historic farewell at Covent Garden, 8 June 1926. She was then just past her sixty-fifth birthday—or her sixty-seventh, according to which biographical dictionar