_Sonnambula_ also helped fix in my mentality the traditions of Italian opera; those traditions that my teachers--Muzio particularly--had been striving so hard to impress upon and make real to me. The school of the older operas, while the greatest school for singers in the world, is one in which tradition is, and must be, pre-eminent. In the modern growths, springing up among us every year, the singer has a chance to create, to trace new paths, to take venturesome flights. The new operas not only permit this, they require it. But it is a pity to hear a young, imaginative artist try to interpret some old and classic opera by the light of his or her modern perceptions. They do not improve on the material. They only make a combination that is bizarre and inartistic. This struck me forcibly not long ago when I heard a young, talented American sing _A non giunge_, the lovely old _aria_ from the last act of _Sonnambula_. The girl had a charming voice and she sang with musical feeling and taste. But she had not one "tradition" as we understood the term, and, in consequence, almost any worn-out, old-school singer could have rendered the _aria_ more acceptably to trained ears. Traditions are as necessary to the Bellini operas as costumes are to Shakespeare's plays. To dispense with them may be original, but it is bad art. And yet, while I became duly impressed with the necessity of the "traditions," during those early performances, I always tried to avoid following them too servilely or too artificially. I tried to interpret for myself, within certain well-defined limits, according to my personal conception of the characters I was personating. The traditions of Italian opera combined with my own ideals of the lyric heroines,--this became my object and ambition. The summer after my _début_, I went on a concert tour under Grau's management, but my throat was tired after the strain and nervous effort of my first season, and I finally went up to the country for a long rest. In New Hartford, Connecticut, my mother, father, and I renewed many old friendships, and it was a genuine pleasure to sing again in a small choir, to attend sewing circles, and to live the every-day life from which I had been so far removed during my studies and professional work. People everywhere were charming to me. Though only nineteen, I was an acknowledged _prima donna_, and so received all sorts of kindly attentions. This was the summer, I believe, (although it may have been a later one) when Herbert Witherspoon, then only a boy, determined to become a professional singer. He has always insisted that it was my presence and the glamour that surrounded the stage because of me that finally decided him.