Elly Ameling is a talker, a punster, a joker, and an utterly serious teacher. She used a combination of humor and the rigorously enforced standards that in her heyday made her one of the world's foremost singers, to guide her temporary charges to a new level. One example of the former will suffice. She had a delightful habit of pulling out from her store of a lifetime's acquisition of delectable tidbits tag lines of popular songs, and refitting them with words appropriate to the situation at hand. After directly challenging a singer with an “s” lisp to “work on your “s's”, she sang in a lilting voice, to the tune of “It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing,” something that sounded like “If it ain't got an ‘s', it don't mean a thing,” tossing it off nonchalantly and breaking up the audience, as she did many times with similar deliberate “malapropisms” and throwaway lines.

As for the rigorous standards, on this evening they were applied mainly to pronunciation and intelligibility of words. Time and again she asked for stronger enunciation of consonants, asserting that it is the consonants that propel the vowels forward and connect the singer more effectively with the text. And time and again, when a singer gave her what she asked for, his or her voice came forward, and with it a new beauty of tone, clarity of diction, and an authority of delivery that was utterly convincing. That enormous difference was accomplished simply by giving consonants their due, without touching on more basic vocal production, which was pretty solid anyway, and which she rightly left to the students' own teachers. Watching her elicit these results was a little like watching a skillful alchemist transmute copper into gold; the resulting metal (mettle?) was much more valuable.

While working on stronger consonants Ameling insisted, gently at first but increasingly more persistently, on legato (which she translated simply as “linked,” but which as a concept is difficult both to teach and to grasp). She chose, for example, from one singer's presentation the beautiful phrase from Duparc's “Le manoir de Rosamonde” (Rosamonde's Manor) that comes at the beginning of the quiet section of the song: “En passant par où j'ai passé (Passing by where I have passed). But first she had to see to it that the singer pronounced clearly the two “p's” of “passant/passé”. Then, when the singer had been partially successful (complete success might not happen, she said over and over, tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, but it would come), she moved to talking about the necessary legato for the same phrase, which she demonstrated first and then worked on tirelessly with the singer. The sought-after mastery was rewarded by Ameling's upraised thumb.

There were more words of wisdom in the two and a half hours than can be compassed in a review. A sampling, not necessarily exactly quoted: You can sing loud in an art song, just like in opera, only the loud parts come quicker. It's not very sad: it's a French sad, a degree lighter than a German sad. Work with your lips, let them work for you; American singers don't work their lips enough. Listen to other singers (e.g. Gérard Souzay, Pierre Bernac) — not to the beautiful voice but to what the beautiful does.

A mother lode of information, gracefully but assiduously conveyed to a well-prepared, talented group of student singers, who were fully aware of the privilege of working with such a masterful Master Teacher.