snuff & cold lemonade
as many of you know, my underground mariachi band is about to drop our latest album. all this studio time has really been taking a toll on my voice however and for the last few days i’ve been sounding a lot like alec baldwin with a bullfrog in his larynx.
my personal trainer has been treating me with all the usual holistic remedies for laryngitis (orchid honey, pickle brine, kerosene) but nothing seems to be working. fortunately, i recently received an old copy of a book of musical anecdote (1878) and can now find out how all the most celebrated singers of the 1800s nursed their ailing vocal chords.
- Formes swore by a pot of good porter
- Wachtel is said to trust to the yolk of an egg beaten up with sugar for his chest C’s.
- We gather from a Vienna paper (not of recent date) that the Swedish tenor Labatt takes two salted cucumbers, and declares that this is the best thing in the world for strengthening the voice and giving it the true metallic ring.
- Southeim is an advocate of snuff and cold lemonade
- Steger, “the corpulent,” as he is surnamed, drinks the brown juice of the gambrinus
- Ferenczy, the tenor, smokes, and strongly recommends a cigar to his colleagues; but others regard such a recipe as fatal, save perhaps Draxler, who smokes Turkish tobacco and cigarettes, cooling his throat betimes with a glass of good beer.
- Rübgam, the barytone, drinks mead; another drinks sodawater; another sucks dried plums
- Nachbaur eats bonbons
- Beck, the barytone, takes nothing at all, and refuses to speak
- Arabenek believes in Grampoldskirchner wine
- Mdlle. Brann-Brini takes beer and café au lait, but she also firmly believes in champagne, and would never dare venture the great duet in the fourth act of the “Huguenots” without a bottle of Möet Crémant Rosé.
- There are “celebrated basses” who advocate the exposure of the neck and chest to a June sun, a March wind, and a November fog
- in the course of a lawsuit between a lady-singer at a music-hall and her manager, it came out in evidence that her favourite “support” was claret and cayenne pepper!
steger, “the corpulent” drinks the brown juice of the gambrinus?!? i guess i could see rübgam drinking brown gambrinus juice when his voice is gravelly, but i’m slightly shocked that steger, “the corpulent” would resort to this kind of obvious folly.
