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. 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.