García, Manuel Patricio Rodriguez

Born Mar. 17, 1805, in Madrid; died July 1, 1906, in London. Spanish singer (bass) and vocal teacher. Doctor of medicine (1855). Son and student of Manuel del P. V. García.

From 1825 to 1827, García made a concert tour of US cities with his father. He made his operatic debut in New York in 1825, and he began to teach in 1829 at his father’s vocal school in Paris. From 1842 to 1850, García taught singing at the Paris Conservatory, and from 1848 to 1895 he was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He wrote several important methodological works—Notes on the Human Voice (1840) and A Complete Guide to the Art of Singing (1847; Russian translation, School of Singing, parts 1-2, 1956). García also did work in the study of the physiology of the human voice. In 1855 he invented the laryngoscope, a device for studying the larynx. García’s pedagogical principles played an important role in the development of 19th-century vocal art. His students included the female singers J. Lind, M. Marchesi, and H. Nissen-Saloman and the male singers C. Everardi and J. Stockhausen.