The Australian, Nellie Melba, who takes her stage name from Melbourne, her birthplace, has been compared to Patti as a vocal technician.  Her voice is divine, but she seems powerless to animate her brilliant singing with the warmth that glows in her eyes.  As an actress she completely veils whatever emotions she may feel, and while her marvelous vocalization overwhelms her audiences, she meets with her greatest triumphs in operas that make the least demands on the dramatic powers.

Massenet wrote the title roles of his “Esclarmonde” and his “Thais” for a California girl, Sybil Sanderson, and himself trained her for their stage presentation.  Her success was assured when she made her debut in the first-named opera at the Opera Comique, in Paris, in 1889.  She has a voice of that light, pure, flexible quality so characteristic of our countrywomen, and is an admirable actress.  She is a pupil of Madame Marchesi.

Another distinguished pupil of the same teacher is Emma Eames, who was born in China of New England parents, and was educated in Boston and in Paris.  Her voice too is exceedingly flexible, is fresh, pure and clear, her intonations are correct and her personality most attractive.  She has been very successful in Wagnerian roles, makes a superb Elsa, and, in the “Meistersinger,” an ideal Eva.  During her early years on the stage her extreme calmness amounted almost to aggravating frigidity, but with time she has thawed.  She may well be considered a conscientious artist endowed with rare musical intuition.

There is no possession more perishable, more delicate, than the human voice.  When one considers the joy it is capable of shedding about it, the blessings that may follow in its train, it seems sad to think of the reckless waste caused by its neglect and mismanagement.  Its life is brief enough at best.  Let it be cherished to the utmost.

In America where there are to-day more fine voices among women than in any other country and where time and means are so freely expended on the musical education of girls, the twentieth century should produce nobler queens of song than the world has yet known.  First, the American girl must learn that the real things of life are more to be prized than false semblances, and that genuine musical culture resting on a foundation built with painstaking care and consecrated artistic zeal, is of far higher and more enduring value than the most dazzling feats of display which lack solid, intrinsic support.

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The Opera and Its Reformers

The evolution of the drama is intimately associated with that of music and both are inseparably entwined with the unfolding of the spiritual life of the human race.  Man is essentially dramatic by nature, and both history and tradition show it to have been among his earliest instincts to express his inner emotions by action and song.