Death to All Vocal Art

Lamperti, the celebrated music master, places the Germans and the Italians highest in excellence as singers, and the Americans next to them.

English voices are poor and unmanageable, he says, because of the manner in which English children are made to talk, and particularly English girls. They must speak in undertones or very subdued tones, and they clip their words in uttering them. Their nurses and governesses also speak in subdued tones and clip so that the young ears are formed to that kind of articulation which emasculates speech and is death to all vocal art. 

—The National Tribune: Washington, D. C, Thursday, July 30, 1885.