Episode 44

Italian Vocal Coach Simone di Felice is with us to discuss more arias from Le nozze di Figaro--since he and I had such a long conversation with a ton of useful information, it will be spread out over two episodes! This week it's Bartolo's aria, "La Vendetta", focusing on some standard verb endings with stressed E, some consonants that are automatically doubled between two vowels and the assimilation of N before certain consonants. The new phonetic letter we talk about is the labio dental [ɱ]. The Opera Guide has a libretto for Le Nozze di Figaro. You'll have to click on Libretto and the letter I (for Italian!), then scroll down to Aria No. 4. The history resources I mentioned on this episode are the classes "History 5: European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present" from UC Berkeley on iTunes University (there are several years to choose from) and the podcast The History of Rome, hosted by Mike Duncan (also available free on iTunes). Feel free to contact me with any comments, questions or suggestions here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com