Book: Caruso and Tetrazzini

on the Art of Singing

“On the Art of Singing”

This book is amazing! Every opera singer should read it. It’s a short book indeed, but plenty of advices and two great performers´ perspectives. So inspiring!

It is about technical subjects as the Breath Control, the Tongue Placement, the Emission and Attack, and Diction, among others.

Both Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini are quite objective and we can learn a lot in a few pages.

I will quote both of them, as I found these two statements really powerful:

“You can train the voice, you can take a raw material and make it a finished production; not so with the heart.”

L. Tetrazzini

“Artists who do not experience it (nervousness) are those who lack real genius. There are really two kinds of fear – that arising from a realization of the importance of what is to be done, the other from a lack of confidence in one’s power. If a singer has no conscience in his performance he is never nervous, but full of assurance.

E. Caruso