=Influence of the Opera on Singing=.—When the Opera was established, after the declamatory style offered by the first composers had proven unsuccessful in holding the public, the florid style of the old discanters was revived and modified, which, as the Opera developed, gave a great impetus to a systematic and thorough study of singing. The new style of melody introduced by the opera composers of the 17th century demanded purity of voice, wide range, flexibility, expressive shading and a marvelous breath control, as well as great physical endurance. Singers were expected to execute the most intricate passages, abounding in diatonic and chromatic scales, arpeggios, turns, gruppettos, trills, etc., of the most elaborate nature, passages such as are considered purely instrumental today. =Alessandro Scarlatti=, the composer, and himself a singer, is credited with having had much to do with the great development in the art of singing. He trained a number of singers and pupils, and thus founded the “old Italian” school of singing. It was natural that the art side of singing should thus develop in Italy for several reasons, notably, because Italy had a great number of highly-trained composers, the character of the language is such as to lend itself to the requirements of artistic singing, broad full vowels, soft consonants, absence of final consonants, etc., and the enthusiastic, essentially lyric temperament of the race. =The Training of a 17th Century Singer=.—We are given an idea of the course of training which singers of the 17th century were obliged to observe in a work _Historia Musica_, published by G. A. A. Buontempi, in 1695. This contains an account of the regulations of a school for singers in Rome, directed by Virgilio Mazzocchi, in which Buontempi was a pupil: The pupils were obliged to devote one hour each day to the singing of difficult passages with the idea of acquiring experience; one hour to the practice of the trill, one to passages in agility, one to literary studies, one to vocalises and to various other technical exercises under the direction of a teacher and before a mirror to acquire the certainty that the singer did not make a faulty movement of the face, the forehead, the eyes or the mouth. This was the morning’s work. In the afternoon, a half-hour was given to theory study, the same amount to writing counterpoint on plain-song melodies, then to learning and applying the rules of composition (writing on an erasable sheet); then followed a half-hour of study of a literary nature, and the rest of the day was given to practice on the clavichord, to the composition of a psalm, motet, canzonetta, or any other kind of piece according to the pupil’s choice. Such were the common exercises of those days when the pupils were kept on duty at the school. On other days, they would go outside the Angelica Gate to sing against the famous echo that was found there, listening to the response in order to criticise their work.