Another highly interesting pupil was a noted baritone. He approached me one night in the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House and asked if I would give him an audition. He explained that he wanted to be a singer but wasn’t sure that he had a voice or talent enough. If not, he wanted to study medicine. "I don’t believe in wasting time, neither yours nor mine," I replied, "so let’s go up to my studio right now and find out."

His voice was glorious and it was backed by a fine intelligence, so we began his lessons immediately. When he was ready for his formal debut, I arranged a New York recital for him, and to make sure that the important critics and press correspondents would attend, I personally called upon them and asked them to do so. Anyone not living in New York can hardly appreciate the overcrowded schedule of that city’s music critics; there are four or five principal concert halls, as well as a number of lesser ones, and during the winter music season they are given over to an average of two performances a day, matinee and evening. ‘That makes an average of eight or ten concert events per day. In addition to these there are the regular performances of the Metropolitan Opera, with perhaps an occasional season of lesser or visiting opera companies at one of the other theaters.

Naturally no critic can attend all of these events, so each one goes to whichever he considers the most important, and sends his assistant to the lesser ones. Even so, a critic rarely can remain to hear the entire performance. Instead, he hears one group of songs at Aeolian Hall, hurries over to hear a second at Town Hall, thence he taxis to Carnegie Hall to hear at least one movement of a symphony, and then, perhaps, back to the Metropolitan to hear the last act of an opera.

Under such conditions a debut recital by an unknown singer cannot hope for serious consideration. Therefore, because of my great faith in the young man, I was determined to do all in my power to induce the critics to hear him. Fortunately, most of them were personal friends of mine, but when I told them the concert’s date, they protested that it was also the date of a special performance of Feodor Chaliapin, and this they positively could not miss. However, they would drop in on the boy’s recital for a few minutes, they promised, warning me in the same breath that their reviews would have to give almost the entire space to the Chaliapin performance, with maybe a paragraph to my unknown pupil. After all, Chaliapin was Chaliapin,  They kept their word. They came. And they heard such superbly beautiful singing that there was never again a question mark in anybody’s mind when that singer’s name was mentioned. Instead of the paragraph which they had promised me, they gave him more than half the space they had reserved for Chaliapin, and so glowing was their praise of my pupil that his career was launched, triumphantly, upon the reviews of this first brilliant recital.