This dramatic _rubato_ is, of course, a very different thing
from the freedom which Italian singers often allow themselves on
favorable high notes, which they prolong, not in order to emphasize an
emotion but to show off the beauty and sustaining power of their
voices.
Scaria, unfortunately, was never heard in opera in this country. But
we have had Materna and Niemann and Brandt and Fischer, and Alvary
and Lehmann, who have given us correct ideas of the German vocal
style. Surely no one can say, on listening to Lehmann's _Bruennhilde_,
or Fischer's _Hans Sachs,_ or Alvary's _Siegfried_, that the vocal
part is inferior in beauty or importance to the orchestral. When
Alvary sang _Siegfried_ for the first time in New York, he presented a
creditable but uneven impersonation, not having sufficiently mastered
the details of the acting to feel quite at ease, and not being able to
husband his vocal resources for the grand duo at the close. But at the
end of the season, at the eleventh performance, he had become a
full-fledged _Siegfried_, acting the part as by instinct, while his
voice was as fresh at the close of the opera as at the beginning: thus
affording a striking proof of Wagner's assertion, that the greatest
vocal difficulties of his roles can be readily mastered if the singer
will only take the pains to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the
text and the dramatic situations.
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