Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/458

 visible complement to the discussion of the orchestra. As the themes which were to help in weaving the drama to its end first came vaguely upon the ear, one saw their import and tendency in the face of this clearest-visioned of the gods.

In the scene between Fricka and Wotan, Ottenburg stopped. "I can't seem to get the voices, in there."

Landry chuckled. "Don't try. I know it well enough. I expect I 've been over that with her a thousand times. I was playing for her almost every day when she was first working on it. When she begins with a part she 's hard to work with: so slow you 'd think she was stupid if you did n't know her. Of course she blames it all on her accompanist. It goes on like that for weeks sometimes. This did. She kept shaking her head and staring and looking gloomy. All at once, she got her line—it usually comes suddenly, after stretches of not getting anywhere at all—and after that it kept changing and clearing. As she worked her voice into it, it got more and more of that 'gold' quality that makes her Fricka so different."

Fred began Fricka's first aria again. "It 's certainly different. Curious how she does it. Such a beautiful idea, out of a part that 's always been so ungrateful. She 's a lovely thing, but she was never so beautiful as that, really. Nobody is." He repeated the loveliest phrase. "How does she manage it, Landry? You 've worked with her."

Landry drew cherishingly on the last cigarette he meant to permit himself before singing. "Oh, it 's a question of a big personality—and all that goes with it. Brains, of course. Imagination, of course. But the important thing is that she was born full of color, with a rich personality. That 's a gift of the gods, like a fine nose. You have it, or you have n't. Against it, intelligence and musicianship and habits of industry don't count at all. Singers are a conventional race. When Thea was studying in Berlin the other girls were mortally afraid of her. She has a pretty