"Freshness and spontaneousness are the most precious qualities of the voice, but they are also the most fragile. The voice which loses them never regains them; its tone is gone, never to return."
"During the first days of practising, the pupils should not devote themselves to their exercises more than five minutes consecutively; but studies thus regulated may be resumed four or five times a day, provided they be separated by long intervals. Afterwards, the time devoted to practice, by increasing it five minutes at a time, may be extended to half an hour, a limit which should never be exceeded. At the end of five or six months, you may increase the number of half hours of exercise to four, but be careful in going beyond it, remembering always that these periods be separated by long rests."
The singer begins again. Her own figure stands before her in the large mirror that hangs behind the master's back; no movement of her face can escape her; every contraction of her eyebrows, every slight wrinkle in her forehead, every ungraceful movement of her mouth is truly reflected there. And no trick passes unreproved, for Garcia's piercing eye watches with fixed attention every feature of the singer. But he does not arrange and prescribe how the cheekbones are to move, or the lips to open; he does not confuse the ideas of his pupils by incomprehensible, wordy descriptions of the position of the mouth and the posture of the head; he simply repeats the teaching of the famous old Italian singing-masters, Tosi and Mancini: "Every singer should hold his mouth as he is in the habit of doing when he smiles naturally, that is, so that the upper teeth may be moderately and perpendicularly separated from the lower ones." Without directing the posture of the body like a drill-sergeant, Garcia says briefly, but decidedly: "Keep the body erect, tranquil, well-balanced on the two limbs, and at a distance from any other point of support." The arms must be held a little back, "so as not to interfere with the play of the chest." The lesson is finished. The maestro kindly dismisses his pupil, again repeats, with condensed brevity, the main point of to-day's instruction, appoints the task for home practice, and encourages the timid departing scholar with heart-cheering words of courage and hope.