The What and How of Vocal Culture

Feb 4

Dr. Mary Augusta Brown Girard was not the only one to publish a book-length account of her studies with Francesco Lamperti a year after his death in 1892. The other person was Frances Roena Medini.

Becoming Medini

Prima donna, suffragette, voice teacher, poet, and friend to Amercia’s great bard Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Madam Medini was known as Frankie Miller back in Ripon, Wisconsin, where she was born to Scottish parents in 1851, the Italianization and creation of her stage name taking place after two years of study in Italy with Francesco Lamperti and Luigi Vannuccini.

While still known as Frankie, a sixteen-year-old Frances taught public school in Wausau, Wisconsin, to 123 students in a room with a capacity for 48, then in far-off Idaho, where she trained a chorus of enthusiastic singers during the evening in order to have funds for a year of study at the Music Vale Seminary in Salem, Connecticut—the first conservatory in America. [1] Medini then went to Hannibal, Missouri, where she had friends and taught at a Methodist College. [2] A clergyman bound for Boston observed her talent and dynamism—and with his advice and assistance, Medini secured a position as soprano soloist in one of the city’s churches, then studied with Lyman Warren Wheeler, a student of Garcia and Scafati. Remaining in Boston for a year, Medini exercised her life-long literary bent by writing anonymous poems in the city’s secular and religious papers. This brought her to the attention of Longfellow, who became Medini’s mentor. [3]

Medini’s Career in Europe

With Wheeler’s letters of introduction and Longfellow’s financial backing, Medini went to Milan in 1875 to study with Lamperti. [4] She was twenty-four. After two years under Lamperti’s tutelage, Medini made her unofficial debut in Verdi’s I Masnadieri at Treviglio, Italy, on October 4, 1877. Her official debut took place three months later in Saluzzo, Italy, as the page in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera. Medini subsequently sang the title role in Rossini’s Linda di Chamounix in Venice, Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto, and Amina in Bellni’s La sonnambula—both in Genoa. [5] Medini sang in Italy for nearly six years and also appeared on opera stages in Spain, Portugal, and Greece. [6] Medini recounted her debut in Linda di Chamounix to the Idaho Daily Statesmen in 1889.

During a pleasant interview with Madam Medini the other day, she told us several anecdotes connected with her professional experience, one of which we take the liberty of repeating as it occurred in connection with one of the selections we hope to hear in her Monologue.

“I was called,” she said “to Venice to do Linda at the Malibran. It is not pleasant to enter a company in the middle of the season, for the new comer is unsually engaged to convince some fractious prima donna that she is not absolute in her reign.

I did not expect to be a bone of contention and was too new to the profession to understand that the Italian managers like nothing better than a battle over two prima donne to infuse life and interest in their season ticket holders.

For some reason, fright which was akin to despair I imagine, I scored a success, and I was called ten times to the footlights.

Later, I was elected to the honor of holding the boards upon the occasion of the manager’s benefit, an honor greatly envied by the enemy’s camp.

I chose the “Shadow Song of Dinorah,” as an especial addition to the usual opera, and the leader of the orchestra called a rehearsal. Although he seemed to have more than his usual patience, there was a general halt and confusion at a point where great nicety and precision was necessary.

“It will go all right tomorrow,” I said to the director finally and we started home. As I reachd my own street, the player of the hautboy sheepishly accosted me in dialect. “Signorini, I’m not stupid, I can play that; the director tries to throw us off.”

“What!” I cried.

“Yes, don’t you know the other prima donna is his pupil, and he does not like your success. He tried to break us down the night of your debut, but we followed you, and he never gave us a look all evening.”

I came to a sudden resolution.

“Never mind,” I said, “do the best you can.”

My courage which had ebbed at a look, now rose at unjust opposition. The night arrived and just before that number, I sent for the director, who wrung his hands and abused the stupidity of the orchsestra in that special selection.

“If I make this sign, Signor Director,” I said illustrating my meaning, “stop the orchestra, the one who gives my echoes may throw me off the key.”

Fortunately he did as requested and I sang the echo and my own part through three pages of fioritura, at the last note with a look of thunder the director gave the sign to the orchestra and came down with a vicious clang of instruments to prove me out of key—not a bit of it. I held my high d as long as the orchestra and was stirred to further daring as the rapturous applause, which only Italians can give, called me back. I motioned to the pianist whom I had warned that I might need and audibly requested him to raise it half a tone. As I took f in the cadenza and e flat at the end, the orchestra rose to their feet to join the deafening applause while the director acknowledged his surrender with a hearty Brava! From that instant he was my friend.

“Did you not enjoy such triumphs, and do not long for a repetition of them?”

“Had I cared more for mine, I should probably not be here today. In the midst of them I was the saddest person on earth. It affected my nerves in that way.”

“Would you attempt such a feat today?”

“Not in a Monolgue where the speaking voice is taxed, but otherwise; why not, and more? My powers were but undeveloped then, and my physical strength much less than today.” [7, 8]

It’s quite a tale, isn’t it? Can you imagine singing in Italy during Medini’s era and the intelligence and fortitude it would take to survive it?

After her triumph in Venice, Medini sang for an extended time in Malta, where she again appeared in Linda di Chamounix, which brought her to the attention of Verdi, who extended his compliments along with an autographed photograph and his desire for Medini to appear as Violetta in Traviata. [9]

Medini then went to London, toured the provinces, and appeared in opera. While there, she declined an offer from the Tinsley Brothers to publish a novel she had written. She declined an even more tempting offer to leave her singing career behind and become a “Ladies Magazine editor.” Per long-held advice from Longfellow, who wrote to Medini before he died in 1882, Medini decided “to sing with her voice, and she would still have time to sing with her pen the pretty songs he loved to read and carefully saved as they appeared." [10]

Personal Medini

What is most interesting is that Medini’s interview with the Idaho Statesmen and her turning down a tempting offer makes it clear that, while experiencing considerable success as a prima donna, she did not enjoy the life of one. Even today, the nomadic life of the professional opera singer can be expensive, stressful, and lonely.

Medini married twice, first to Henry Bowen, a resident in New York, whom she divorced for “failure to support” in 1890—the year she returned to America and taught public school in Helena, Montana; then to Henry J. Casedy in 1893, a resident of Helena and of “one of the efficient clerks of the district court as well as a musician.” [11, 12]

Helena, Montana, would be the base from which Medini continued singing and teaching, campaigning and working for women’s rights, and writing three books.

Medini as Author

The novel the Tinsley Brothers wanted was Edalaine, a metrical romance, which Medini published in 1892. Medini’s narrative poem was viral and went through numerous printings. She also published a book of sonnets in 1896—Love’s Hymnal: sonnets. Between these two literary works, Medini wrote The What and How of Vocal Culture, a rich accounting of Francesco Lamperti’s teaching published in 1893—a year after the maestro’s death and appearing alongside Girard’s Vocal Art: How to Tune a Voice and Make It a Beautiful Instrument.

The What and How of Vocal Culture

Medini gives the reader—to use the language of motor-learning theory—a great deal of procedural information—the “how” of singing; and like Girard in Vocal Art: How to Tune a Voice and Make It a Beautiful Instrument, stresses the Lamperti School teaching of singing from the center of the head—Girard referring to this as the “throne of the pharynx” and Medini as the “the cavity behind the uvula.” Readers will also know this teaching as “the spot” in William Earl Brown’s Vocal Wisdom: Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti. [13, 14, 15]

There is, of course, a great deal more to be discovered in Madam Medini’s book, which you can find on the download page.

Medini’s Longevity

Reports as late as 1916, when Medini was 65, note: “Madam Medini…is an indefatigable worker and student, and is considered a marvel among musicians because each year adds some added beauty and power to her beautiful voice, conceding nothing to the passing of youth, other than the desire to shirk work. She proves it by teaching many who have passed the meridian, and who have not sung for years, that voice has no age.” [16]

This is the teaching of the Lamperti School.

Wisconsin Heartland: The Story of Wausau Marathon County, and Illustrated History by Michael Kronewetter, p 228.
The Milan Exchange, Milan, Tennessee, December 13, 1877.
Idaho Semi-Weekly Word, August 16, 1887, p. 1.
The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Andrew R. Hilen, vol 5, p. 4, 1982.
“Miss F. Roena Miller,” Folio: A Journal of Music, Drama, Art and Literature, Boston, April 1881, vol 20, no 4, p 134.
Wisconsin Heartland: The Story of Wausau Marathon County, and Illustrated History by Michael Kronewetter, p 228.
Idaho Daily Statesman, Boise, Idaho, November 17, 1889, p 1.
During Medini’s time, a monologue was one person's performance art, consisting of recitations, song singing, and scenes from opera performed in costume.
“Miss F. Roena Miller,” Folio: A Journal of Music, Drama, Art and Literature, Boston, April 1881, vol 20, no 4, p 134.
Idaho Semi-Weekly Word, August 16, 1887, p 1.
Salt Lake Herald, June 24, 1890, p 1. The date of Medini’s marriage to Bowen is unclear.
Helena Independent, January 2, 1893, p, 1. Ancestry records Medini as being single in 1900. She later moved to Chicago to take care of a sister.
Girard, Mary Augusta Brown. Vocal Art: How to Tune a Voice and Make It a Beautiful Instrument, 1893, p. 33, 80.
Medini, Frances Roena. The What and How of Vocal Culture, 1893, p. 18.
Brown, William Earl. Vocal Wisdom: Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti, p. 113.
Wausau Pilot, August 8, 1916, p. 1.