Night after night I played him [Mr. Rose-Innes] scenes out of all these operas, endeavouring to the best of my ability to reproduce the vocal and orchestral effects I had heard at the theatre, and referring as little as possible to the dull pianoforte arrangement before me. If I didn’t play a solo with all the tenderness, or charm, or brio with which some great singer had sung it, he would stop me over and over again. “No, no, you haven’t got it; don’t you remember the splendid virility with which he simply brought the house down with such and such an aria? Don’t you remember how she lingered on that note?” Or, “Try and make that finale sound as if there were a crowd of people singing,” etc. etc. And I took to this Italian operatic music like a duck to water. There was something emotional in it that appealed to the youth in me, and I loved to try and make the piano a living and breathing human voice. That my playing of these scores gave real pleasure to someone very dear to me was in itself a powerful incentive. Perhaps the actual music only stirred me on the surface - still, even surfaces are facts that cannot be denied, and have to be reckoned with. And I adored, with every reason, the really beautiful singing I heard so constantly; my love of vocal music grew apace, and in my admiration for the singer I often failed to detect the flimsy quality of the music.