Herbert Witherspoon, not unknown to fame as an operatic artist and concert singer, summed up for me the situation in a phrase. “Opera singers open their mouths too wide.” Hence screaming and bawling which nearly splits sensitive ears. That the public likes shouting on top-tones is only evidence of the public’s appalling taste. Noise, noise, noise! We worship noise in America. Another neurosis. Noise the Ultimate Vulgarity. At last the subway voice has penetrated our opera-houses; charmless, voiceless, vicious. The three dramatic unities in the modern theatre have resolved themselves into Legs, Glitter, Buncombe. On the lyric stage the chief unit is yelling. No wonder they sing and grow voiceless. Purdon Robinson, himself a concert singer of note, in the course of an instructive lecture recently remarked: “My own opinion, backed by thirty years of singing and teaching, has resulted in the belief that a mechanical method makes a mechanical singer”; and “after the voice has been placed and one has it under control, forget it when singing. Try to get at the composer’s meaning, realizing that words in themselves mean little, and that notes in music are simply the symbols by which musical ideas are indicated.” For the average vocalist words are not symbols but cymbals. But Mr. Robinson’s words are golden. Years ago (do sit still a moment, this is not a spun-out story of my life!) a young woman consulted me about a vocal master. She was a choir singer from the remote South, her parents poor as brewery mice--are to be--and she thought she had a remarkable voice. I say “thought.” Care killed a cat. Thought never slew a larynx. I played a hymn tune. She sang. I shuddered, but was relieved when she told me that her name was Elvina Crow. After all, there is something to be said for Prof. Slawkenbergius and his theory of names as set forth by the veracious Rev. Laurence Sterne. I suggested that if she decided on a career she change her name to “Sgallinacciare,” which appropriately enough means to crow; also a faulty method of singing. “Signorina Sgallinacciare!” How that would ring in the credulous ears of the dear old deluded public, which, Hamlet-like, doesn’t know a hawk from a hand-saw, or, if you prefer, a hernshaw. Shriek and grow rich! Nothing else matters but “mazuma” in the box-office of the Seven Deadly Arts.