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"It's a route to success. You must go the whole route or not at all." "Don't forget that there have been other singers besides Rivi." "Not any that I recall who weren't naturally powerful in every way. And how many of them break down? Mildred, please do put the silly nonsense about nerves and temperament and inspiration and overwork and weather and climate put all that out of your head.
When the note was on its way, she threw out all her medicines, and broke the new spraying apparatus Hicks had instructed her to buy. She went back to the Rivi regime. A week passed, and she was little better. Two weeks, and she began to mend. But it was six weeks before the last traces of her folly disappeared. Moldini said not a word, gave no sign.
Jennings did not pursue the subject, but abruptly began the lesson. That day and several days thereafter he put her to tests he had never used before. She saw that he was searching for something for the flaw implied in the adverse verdict of the son of Lucia Rivi. She was enormously relieved when he gave over the search without having found the flaw.
or that image of the cold dull shadow over the torrent, beneath the Alpine fir: "Un' ombra smorta Qual sotto foglie verdi e rami nigri Sovra suoi freddi rivi, l'Alpe porta;" or of the large snowflakes falling without wind among the mountains: "d'un cader lento Piovean di fuoco dilatate falde Come di neve in Alpe senza vento."
Presbury, reduced now by various infirmities by absolute deafness, by dimness of sight, by difficulty in walking to where eating was his sole remaining pleasure, or, indeed, distraction, spent all his time in concocting dishes for himself. Mildred could not resist and who can when seated at table with the dish before one's eyes and under one's nose. The Rivi regimen was suspended for the visit.
The next day she began with Moldini, and put the Lucia Rivi system into force in all its more than conventual rigors. And for about a month she worked like a devouring flame. Never had there been such energy, such enthusiasm. Mrs. Belloc was alarmed for her health, but the Rivi system took care of that; and presently Mrs.
Cyrilla read slowly and without comment. At last she said: "He got this from his mother, Lucia Rivi. Have you read her life?" "No. I've heard almost nothing about her, except that she was famous." "She was more than that," said Mrs. Brindley. "She was great, a great personality. She was an almost sickly child and girl. Her first attempts on the stage were humiliating failures.
She felt that the Rivi system and the dirty, obscure little Moldini between them were destroying Mildred by destroying all "temperament" in her. It was the old, old criticism of talent upon genius. Genius has always won in its own time and generation all the world except talent.
"There isn't a doubt in my mind now," replied he. "You ought to be one of the few great lyric sopranos within five years." "A man, this summer a really unusual man in some ways told me there was no hope for me." "A singing teacher?" "No, a lawyer. A Mr. Keith Donald Keith." "I've heard of him," said Jennings. "His mother was Rivi, the famous coloratura of twenty years ago." Mildred was astounded.
To talent contemporaneous genius, genius seen at its patient, plodding toil, seems coarse and obvious and lacking altogether in inspiration. Talent cannot comprehend that creation is necessarily in travail and in all manner of unloveliness. Mildred toiled on like a slave under the lash, and Moldini and the Rivi system were her twin relentless drivers. She learned to rule herself with an iron hand.
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