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evening. How often one feels indisposed in the morning! Any physical reason is sufficient to make singing difficult, or even impossible; it need not be connected necessarily with the vocal organs; in fact, I believe it very rarely is. For this reason, in two hours everything may have changed.
I remember a charming incident in New York. Albert Niemann, our heroic tenor, who was to sing Lohengrin in the evening, complained to me in the morning of severe hoarseness. To give up a rôle in America costs the singer, as well as the director, much money. My advice was to wait.
Niemann. What do you do, then, when you are hoarse?
I. Oh, I practise and see whether it still troubles me.
Niem. Indeed; and what do you practise?
I. Long, slow scales.
Niem. Even if you are hoarse?
I. Yes; if I want to sing, or have to, I try it.
Niem. Well, what are they? Show me.
The great scale, the infallible cure.
I showed them to him; he sang them, with words of abuse in the meantime; but gradually his hoarseness grew better. He did not send word of his inability to appear in the evening, but sang, and better than ever, with enormous success.
I myself had to sing Norma in Vienna some years ago, and got up in the morning quite hoarse. By nine o'clock I tried my infallible remedy, but could not sing above A flat, though in the evening I should have to reach high D flat and E flat. I was on the point of giving up, because the case seemed to me so desperate. Nevertheless, I practised till eleven o'clock, half an hour at a time, and noticed that I was gradually getting better. In the evening I had my D flat and E flat at my command and was in brilliant form. People said they had seldom heard me sing so well.
I could give numberless instances, all going to show that you never can tell early in the day how you are going to feel in the evening. I much prefer, for instance,