My very dear friend,
I am most grateful to you for communicating C. Schaeffer’s letter to me. Whether so long a work as the one he is planning on vocal training would be suitable for our somewhat slender journal I am bound to doubt. I believe that all we can do is criticize the existing system, and offer suggestions and make demands concerning our style in general. On the question of vocal instruction I have become thoroughly sceptical. With the older Italian singers there was nothing for the singing teacher to do except instruct his pupils in music & manner of execution. But we moderns - including us Germans - believe we can teach untalented singers afflicted with vocal shortcomings to sing properly by means of gymnastic throat exercises. Never in my experience has a singer afflicted with palatal intonation and poor articulation ever really learnt to sing properly. By contrast I have found singers (including some of recent acquaintance) with a naturally sound vocal attack and good articulation whom all I needed to teach was the correct phrasing with sensible breath divisions - at the right tempo! - in order for them to produce the best results that they could ever have been intended by nature to achieve.
I believe it is all a question of practice and of setting a living example!
I at least understand so little about theory that I am utterly incapable of passing judgement on theoretical views etc. -
But - : criticism of our singers’ achievements - willingly! But where does one get the necessary authority? Well, ultimately one can claim it for oneself! -
See what you can do, and may God have mercy upon you!
Yours,
R. Wagner.
Source: Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), No. 470