By training, I always mean a training into Nature.  As I have said before, if art is Nature illuminated, we must find Nature before we can reach art.  The trouble is that in acting, more than in any other art, the distinction between what is artistic and what is artificial is neither clearly understood nor appreciated; yet so marked is the difference when once we see it, that the artificial may well be called the hell of art, as art itself is heavenly.

Sincerity and simplicity are the foundations of art.  A feigning of either is often necessary to the artificial, but many times impossible.  Although the external effect of this natural training is a great saving of nervous force in acting, the height of its power cannot be reached except through a simple aim, from the very heart, toward sincere artistic expression.

So much for acting.  It is a magnificent study, and should be more truly wholesome in its effects than any other art, because it deals with the entire body.  But, alas I it seems now the most thoroughly morbid and unwholesome.

All that has been said of acting will apply also to singing, especially to dramatic singing and study for opera; only with singing even more care should be taken.  No singer realizes the necessity of a quiet, absolutely free body for the best expression of a high note, until having gained a certain physical freedom without singing, she takes a high note and is made sensitive to the superfluous tension all over the body, and later learns to reach the same note with the repose which is natural; then the contrast between the natural and the unnatural methods of singing becomes most evident,—­and not with high notes alone, but with all notes, and all combinations of notes.  I speak of the high note first, because that is an extreme; for with the majority of singers there is always more or less fear when a high note is coming lest it may not be reached easily and with all the clearness that belongs to it.  This fear in itself is tension.  For that reason one must learn to relax to a high note.  A free body relieves the singer immensely from the mechanism of singing.  So perfect is the unity of the body that a voice will not obey perfectly unless the body, as a whole, be free.  Once secure in the freedom of voice and body to obey, the song can burst forth with all the musical feeling, and all the deep appreciation of the words of which the singer is capable.  Now, unfortunately, it is not unusual in listening to a public singer, to feel keenly that he is entirely adsorbed in the mechanism of his art.

If this freedom is so helpful, indeed so necessary, to reach one’s highest power in singing, it is absolutely essential on the operatic stage.  With it we should have less of the wooden motion so common to singers in opera.  When one is free, physically free, the music seems to draw out the acting.  With a great composer and an interpreter free to respond, the music and the body of the actor are one in their power of expressing the emotions.  And the songs without words of the interludes so affect the spirit of the singer that, whether quiet or in motion, he seems, through being a living embodiment of the music, to impress the sense of seeing so that it increases the pleasure of hearing.