_January 12, 1918._ The New Art of the Singer "_It's the law of life that nothing new can come into the world without pain._" Karen Borneman. The New Art of the Singer The art of vocalization is retarding the progress of the modern music drama. That is the simple fact although, doubtless, you are as accustomed as I am to hearing it expressed _a rebours_. How many times have we read that the art of singing is in its decadence, that soon there would not be one artist left fitted to deliver vocal music in public. The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe wrote something of the sort in 1825 for he found the great Catalani but a sorry travesty of his early favourites, Pacchierotti and Banti. I protest against this misconception. Any one who asserts that there are laws which govern singing, physical, scientific laws, must pay court to other ears than mine. I have heard this same man for twenty years shouting in the market place that a piece without action was not a play (usually the drama he referred to had more real action than that which decorates the progress of _Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model_), that a composition without melody (meaning something by Richard Wagner, Robert Franz, or even Edvard Grieg) was not music, that verse without rhyme was not poetry. This same type of brilliant mind will go on to aver (forgetting the Scot) that men who wear skirts are not men, (forgetting the Spaniards) that women who smoke cigars are not women, and to settle numberless other matters in so silly a manner that a ten year old, half-witted school boy, after three minutes light thinking, could be depended upon to do better.