MUSICAL CHARLATANISM IN MILAN.
To send a girl to Italy is not only possible moral ruin, but certain loss of time and money. In Milan, which the detractors of our country tell us is “the great art centre,” there are more than 400 young men and women who have paid, under ridiculous misrepresentation, large sums of money to one or the other of the celebrated Italian singing masters, and wbo are now chiefly employed cooling their heels around the square of the .Homo, waiting in vain for the engagements which never come.Of the two leading teachers of singing in this Milan, ono is an uneducated peasant of nearly eighty,'who speaks very had. Italian and whose sagacious theory is that the breath comes not from the lungs, hut from the hones, while the other is also an octogenarian, who gives his lessons in bed, who is visited by short spasms at irregular intervals, and whose theory is that the breath comes not from the hones, but from the lungs. Your young lady student who goes to Milan can take her selection between these two old gentlemen, can brave the social demoralisation Milanese artistic society and the extraordinary changes of a Lombardian climate ; and, when she emerges from the two years of tuition at an extravagont pace, she will (it is well to speak plainly) be compelled to pay the impressario for her debut and to pay the critics for their laudatory notices. Both evils are so unanimously admitted that it is useless to ventilate the question. Thorn is no Italian impressario who will give an artist a gratuitous debut and there are but few Italian critics who will praise an artist without being paid in hard cash for it. And when the first appearance is passed and the laudatory notices are gained, what is the use of them ? Hid I choose to collect them, my desk would ho filled by laudatory notices of these artists whose names are unknown, and are never likely to be known here. .The Milanese mania is, in fact, purely moonshine. The successful artist depends upon her natural gifts which can he cultivated by the art of masters in London or any other capital better than they can he in Milan, After all, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and a rapid glance through the list of great artists of modern times will soon dissipate the idea that at Milan alone is true art found. Mme. Patti was educated at Philadelphia, Mme. Nielson in Paris, M’lle Titicnsin Vienna, Mrne. Trehelli in Paris, Mme. Alhani in America, Mme. Edith Wynne, Mme. Patey and innumerable others in England, Mr Santly in Italy (a good many years ago, by Signor Nov arc, now dead) Mme. Gerster in Yinnca, and so on. The fact is that- Italy is, for average vocalists, a simple fraud, while phenomenal vocalists will get better iustruc- , tion in England than they can obtain i in any other country in the world > simply because we can better afford it pay for it.
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Temuka Leader, Issue 170, 20 August 1879, Page 3
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508MUSICAL CHARLATANISM IN MILAN. Temuka Leader, Issue 170, 20 August 1879, Page 3
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