The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1883-11-08
A Million-Dollar Prima-Donna.

'It's sin, in my opinion, to pay
Patti $4,000 a night. That is more than
the majority of the human race save in
a lifetime
The speaker was conscientious gen.
tleman in Wall street banking house,
thoroughly experienced in matters of
commercial supply and demand. The
reporter started out to find the actual
cost of the production of a prima-don-
Ia. A man thoroughly versed in the
statistics of the musical world figured
as follows: There are not less than
600 or 800 young women in New York
to-day studying vocal music with the
ambition and aim of capturing some of
the prizes which await the successful
vocalist. One goes to some famous
teacher, probably an Italian, and has
her voice tried: Vera fina voica; voica
vera mucha like PATHS That settles
Il, and arrangements are at once made
for two lessons a week at 81 or $5 les
son; piano is rented at 81 or So
week, and our aspirant begins literally
to scale the ladder of fame.
Now, at the end of the first year let
us look at our 800 girls again. You
will scarcely recognize them. They
have spent $500, 900 in the year, and all
the return that is promised so far is
$4O0 year which one of them is ex-
pecting in church position. Some of
them have lost their voices through
sickness. Others through unskillful
musical charlatans have ruined natural
ly good voices. Lack of funds has
forced some to abandon their musical
career, encouragement has dragged
down few, but 400 keep on. They
find that a year has only laid the foun-
dation for vocal method. Some seek
new, and It is to be hoped better in
structors, and have to pass a year I'M
learning what they toiled so hard to ac-
quire. At the end of the second year
S400, 900 more has been spent, and as
result we have five voices which have
been brought to as high point of ex-
cellence as nature and art combined
will permit, and still there is no one of
them so marvellous or far above many
other trained voices as to command
more than 5000 a week in concerts.
"Think of the thousands of circum-
stances that must exist in favorable
conjunction to produce great singer.
1t is like those astronomical events,
when certain planets are in a line, that
only happened every century or so; or,
rather, singer is much like a race
horse in many respects, the organism
on which excellence depends is so dain-
ty and easily disarranged. Then there
are the hidden qualities of perseverance
and courage, which may appear or dis
appear, making or marring fortune,
providing everything else is favorable.
Think of the hours of muscular train
ing and practice of the vocal organs;
then again of the mental strain, the
hours of encouragement and even the
gallons of tears the sentimental, SYM
pathetic creatures shed, and it seems
no more than right to pay the success
full ones fair sum for their efforts.
.'Now, out of the five girls who have
reached the end of their studies, the
one who sings in concert suddenly be-
gins to develop, for some inexplicable
reason, Just as horses sometimes come
to the front during a season. Mind
you, to be great on the stage she must
also have the dramatic instinct and a
fine personal appearance. She goes to
Europe. There she must, as Miss Fan
ny Davenport recently stated, most like
ly purchase debut. Suppose she is
grand success, has it not taken over a
million dollars in solid gold, and ten or
twelve hundred years of time-that is,
six or eight hundred girls studying
year or two would consume that much
time-besides fund of natural talent
and a fortuity of events little less than
miraculous? Five thousand dollars an
evening is cheap enough; if it is not,
why does not some one come in and by
competition bring down the price? The
manager who has singer recognized
on all hands as the greatest extant may
well say, There's only one, and I've
got it. IN y Journal