Mme. Florenza D'Arona on Teachers and Students

Be sure you are right and then push ahead. While in the studio give yourself up to your teacher, give more time to voice placement and all the ground that it covers; leave pieces and repertoire alone until every note is as beautiful as it can be made; master the science first, the art is a study of a life-time, expanding with every year; put three to four good years of solid work in the studio; good coaching is all you'll need after that, or an accompanist to assist you with committing a répertoire.  

Put aside ambition for plain common sense, backed by determination to ind out the road to fame, and never stop or be stopped by obstacles that should forearm you if you are forewarned. Learn that if you are not successful, you are either not appreciated, are contending against prejudice, ignorance, or maliciousness, or you are not at your best through inexperience or inefficiency. If the latter, you deserve censure and should retire for further study; if hindered by inexperience, take the lesson from whomever gives it, and profit by it; remember you have lots to learn, and must walk in the footprints of all the other divas. 

If you are contending against maliciousness, ignorance, or prejudice, fortify yourself with courage, for what is apparently your disgrace in one city is your virtue in another, and what passes without a hand of applause in one country may bring you the longed for fame in another. 

Be sure you are deserving, and then never fall below your own standard and you will command success. 

—Mme. Florenza D'Arona, student of Francesco Lamperti and Antonio Sangiovanni, The Musical Courier, May 13, 1896