A SINGER ON HIS ART.

West Coast Times, 17 February 1914, Page 4

A SINGER ON HIS ART.

PAUL DEFAULT INTERVIEWED. VALUE OF PERFECT HEALTH. WELLINGTON, Feb. Id, "It would surprise many to know the quiet orderly lines vocal artists are compelled to live'to do justice to themselves and'the public.” The remark came from Mr. Paid Default, the cultured Freuch-Canadian tenor, comfortably ensconced in a well-upholstered arm-chair in his room on the fifth floor of the Grand Hotel. It led the singer, whose power to charm and fire audiences is so freely admitted by all who have heard him, into a train oi thought which induced a flow of fact and philosophy. You sing every night? “Yes, them are many others who dt net—but it is not because they could not sing just as easily as I do if they led as quiet a life. 1 eonsidor that 1 owe it to myself and to the public to keep in condition physically—that cannot he done if one accepted every invitation to drink ami so make oneself a good fellow, to go out to late him pers, or play cards more than half the right. An artist cannot afford to da it. Many do, I know, but do they last? X could' tell you of dozens of fine singers, admirably equipped in every respect, who have followed the rosy path, only to bo pulled up short when they should have, been at their best. It is no strain for an artist to sing or.eo in twenty-four hours—the strain is in the preparation for the work to be done during tho concert. The voice is such a delicate organ that you leave to watch it and nurture it unceasingly. Yon may he in good voice on > minute,*, and by sitting in a draught it may ha gone the next. At seven o'clock of an evening yon might feel like singing before Royalty, and at eight you night have developed a huskiness from oie of a thousand causes. StiP, you have to go on—you sing, badly, and then you get "biffed on the bead” lath * critics. That anxiety is a mental

ordeal—t)i/> t is what tears at the nerves. So one has to keep in perfect health—always to do oneself justice As the limn- of a concert draws near I find myself examining my voice, as an operator watches the development of a photographic plate. Travelling rapidly from point to point one has to gnard against climatic changes, and, in particular, to see that the stomach is always in order. A disordered stomach affects the vocal chords almost immediately, so you see how careful one must bo in their living if they nish to bo in perfect vocal condition,” “People say sometimes: “Oh, what a lovely life it must he— to sing for an hour, receive the adulation of the public, and have all the day to oneself. The adulation is very nice, and we all like to have it. but the artistic life really is one of the hardest in the whole range of the professions. It is not the actual singing that bothers one hut it is the constant care of the voice and the study that is unending that makes play on the nervous system. People who do not take their an seriously in such matters are not artists at all. If they neglect themselves by over-eating and drinking too much they lose their power to create, and when they lose that they lose status, and become—well, gramophones. Professional teachosrs of singing in Mew. York have come to me and'asked me to sing a song to them—to see how I interpret it. 1 shy to them: “What is the use? You don’t want to do it as I do it. Cannot you think it out for youreslf?” Such people are not artists —they are only mimics. They are like those people who live in the picture galleries of Europe, painting copies of the grout masters. So mepcople who are not connoisseurs of art commission them to paint copies of Rosa Rordieur. Corot, or others, and they turn them out in a week or so, sometimes so perfect that they can scarcely he distim gnished from the original. Rut those people are hot artists—they are only clever painters. They create nothing!”