After the theatre closed in he went to Italy, where he met with considerable success. This was both the opportunity for the tenor to flourish as a soloist, and the cause of his temporary demise. All of the pedagogical works of the period follow the same structure, beginning with exercises on single notes and eventually progressing to scales and improvised embellishments. On winter nights they would tell the admiring ladies who visited their dressing rooms that they were collecting contributions for the dying widow of a fellow thespian so that they could buy her some heartwarming flannel. However, as the great Caruso once observed, a singer's life should be told in song, not words.
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