My _début_ was in New York at the old Academy of Music, and Rigoletto was the famous Ferri. He was blind in one eye and I had always to be on his seeing side,--else he couldn't act. Stigelli was the tenor. Stiegel was his real name. He was a German and a really fine artist. But I had then had no experience with stage heroes and thought they were all going to be exactly as they appeared in my romantic dreams, and--poor man, he is dead now, so I can say this!--it was a dreadful blow to me to be obliged to sing a love duet with a man smelling of lager beer and cheese! Charlotte Cushman--who was a great friend of Miss Emma Stebbins, the sister of Colonel Stebbins--had always been interested in me; so when she knew that I was to make my _début_ on February 26 (1861), she put on _Meg Merrilies_ for that night because she could get through with it early enough for her to see part of my first performance. She reached the Academy in time for the last act of _Rigoletto_; and I felt that I had been highly praised when, as I came out and began to sing, she cried: "The girl doesn't seem to know that she has any arms!" My freedom of gesture and action came from nothing but the most complete familiarity with the part and with the detail of everything I had to do. In opera one cannot be too temperamental in one's acting. One cannot make pauses when one thinks it effective, nor alter the stage business to fit one's mood, nor work oneself up to an emotional crescendo one night and not do it the next. Everything has to be timed to a second and a fraction of a second. One cannot wait for unusual effects. The orchestra does not consider one's temperament, and this fact cannot be lost sight of for a moment. This is why I believe in rehearsing and studying and working over a _rôle_ so exhaustively--and exhaustingly. For it is only in that most rigidly studied accuracy of action that any freedom can be attained. When one becomes so trained that one cannot conceivably retard a bar, and cannot undertime a stage cross nor fail to come in promptly in an _ensemble_, then, and only then, can one reach some emotional liberty and inspiration. If I had not worked so hard at Gilda I should never have got through that first performance. I was not consciously nervous, but my throat--it is quite impossible to tell in words how my throat felt. I have heard singers describe the first-night sensation variously,--a tongue that felt stiff, a palate like a hot griddle, and so on. My throat and my tongue were dry and thick and woolly, like an Oriental rug with a "pile" so deep and heavy that, if water is spilled on it, the water does not soak in, but lies about the surface in globules,--just a dry and unabsorbing carpet.