Soon after Manuel came to Italy he was taken by his father to see Ansani, who not only heard him sing, but gave him a few informal lessons. It was a case of winter and spring, for while the pupil was in his tenth year, the teacher was approaching his seventieth. With this fact we are brought face to face with an almost incredible link with the past. Ansani was nearly twenty when Porpora died, in his eighty-second year. A remark which Manuel Garcia once made rather points to the possibility that Ansani may have had a few lessons from Porpora himself. Whether this was absolutely true I know not,--at any rate it may well have been so. Accept the supposition, and those who had the honour of studying under the "centenarian" would at once be placed in a position to say that they were pupils of one whose master had himself received lessons from a man born in 1687. The possibility is a fascinating one. Giovanni Ansani himself was an interesting personality. Born in Rome about the middle of the eighteenth century, it has been reported that he once met Bach. As, however, the German composer died in the year 1750, about the time that Ansani was still busying himself with the feeding-bottle--or its eighteenth-century equivalent--the story must be regarded with some suspicion, to say the least of it. After a musical training received in Italy, he sang in various parts of the Continent. Twenty years before the close of the century he made his appearance in London, and at once took the first place. He soon left, however, on account of disputes with Roncaglia. In 1781 he returned to England, and Dr Burney, who heard him sing in that year, has described him as the sweetest, albeit one of the most powerful, tenors of his generation. He was a spirited actor, and had a full, fine-toned, and commanding voice, while, according to Gervasoni, he had a very rare truth of intonation, great power of expression, and most perfect method both of voice emission and vocalisation. His wife, Maccherini, was also a singer, and accompanied him to London on his second visit. He himself was always noted for a quarrelsome disposition, and as a prima donna his wife had an almost equally bad temper. Such jealousy in fact existed between them that, when either was applauded for singing, the other was accustomed to go into the pit and hiss. In 1784 Ansani appeared at Florence, and toured Italy. At the age of fifty he retired and settled in Naples, where he devoted himself to teaching. It was some twelve years later that he began to give lessons to the elder Garcia. When Manuel joined his parents, he at once commenced to study singing under his father's guidance. The training of those days was a much slower process than that which is deemed necessary at the present time. Months, indeed years, would be spent in the practice of simple solfeggi, to be followed by exercises in rhythm and studies for intonation.