"
I have never had the privilege of hearing Schnorr, but I heard Scaria
repeatedly at Bayreuth and Vienna, and he always impressed on me, in
the manner here described by Wagner, the supreme importance of the
vocal part in his scores. Not a word of the text was lost, and in the
most difficult intervals his voice was always beautifully and
smoothly modulated. He enabled me to realize for the first time, the
truth of what Wagner said regarding his vocal style, in the following
words: "In my operas there is no difference between phrases that are
'declaimed' and 'sung,' but my declamation is at the same time song,
and my song declamation." Scaria's method also afforded an eloquent
illustration of the wonderful manner in which, in Wagner's vocal
style, the melodic accent always falls on the proper rhetorical accent
of each word of the text, which is one of the secrets of clear
enunciation. He emphasized important syllables by dwelling on them,
thus producing that dramatic _rubato_ which Wagner considered of such
great importance in his operas that, when he brought out "Tannhaeuser"
in Dresden, he actually had the words of the text copied into the
parts of all the orchestral players, in order that they might be able
to follow these poetic licenses in the dramatic phrasing of the
singer.
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