In the second episode of our two-part discussion of Modern Greek Diction, Lydía Zervános works through the texts Κάτω στον Άγιο Σίδερο and Ο Ναός. We focus on the letters Gamma γ and Kappa κ and the vowel digraphs : αι [ε]; ει, οι and υι which all become [i]; αυ [av] or [af] and ευ [εv] or [εf]; and ου [u], along with the accent marking ´ and the diaeresis ¨ . Κάτω στον Άγιο Σίδερο is probably recognized better as "La-bas, vers l'église", from Ravel's Five Greek Songs. Ο Ναός was composed by Μαν...
Sep 01, 2013•32 min
Είμαι πάρα πολύ χαρουμένη για αυτά τα επισόδια! This episode and the next will be on one of my favorite topics--Modern Greek Diction! On this episode, baritone Aris Argiris works through the Greek alphabet with us, through the text Κόρες της Αττικής. Κόρες της Αττικής was set to music by Theodoros Karyotakis (I could only find this in German on Wikipedia), a student of Dmitri Mitropoulos. The text to this song can be found on page 49 of Lydia Zervanos' Greek Diction Guide for Singers , from a Pr...
Jun 03, 2013•35 min
In the second half of my conversation with Italian bass Maurizio Muraro, we discuss the text to Don Bartolo's aria "A un dottor della mia sorte" from Il barbiere di Siviglia . This time we concentrate on the rule of "raddoppiamento sintattico" (called phrasal doubling in English), the combination GLI [ʎ], S before a voiced consonant (which becomes a voiced [z]) and when to roll or not roll Rs! You can find a libretto for Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Opernführer. Scroll down to Aria No.8 (remem...
Apr 22, 2013•32 min
After an unexpected extended delay due to a climbing accident and travelling over Easter, we're back! Italian bass Maurizio Muraro, discusses Banco's aria from Macbeth in this episode, focusing on the palatal consonants GN [ɲ] and GL [λ], the combinations NG [ŋg] and NC [ŋk], double consonants and phrasal doubling, plus the suffixes -MENTO and -MENTE with stressed closed E [e]. Here is a libretto for Verdi's Macbeth--for Banco's aria scroll down to Nr. 8 1/2 Scena Banco. Sometimes the Opera Guid...
Apr 07, 2013•30 min
We're sticking with Händel's Messiah this week, with soprano Amanda Majeski discussing "Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion" and the four short soprano recitatives before the chorus "Glory to God", followed by the rest of my conversation with Jan and Catherine McDaniel of the Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University. This week's episode focuses on English diphthongs and triphthongs, implosion and explosion of final Ds and Ts before another T and the specific words "righteous" and "with" ...
Feb 27, 2013•40 min
As a belated Valentine's present, The Diction Police is back with all new episodes for 2013! Miss Kitty Fantastico and I are all settled in our new apartment and I have quite a few episodes already recorded, so we should be able to stay on track for this spring! This week and next we'll be talking about some arias from Händel's Messiah . On this episode, tenor Charles Reid goes through the text of "Comfort Ye... Ev'ry Valley", and then we discuss some of the problematic traditional misuse of dic...
Feb 17, 2013•41 min
Today's episode is in response to a request from the Facebook page, specifically for young coaches! Conductor Erik Nielsen, and singers Simon Neal, John Packard and Nadja Mchantaf talk about what they are looking for from a rehearsal pianist or a vocal coach and I share my experiences as a coach, including a few of my tricks and advice on practicing for auditions. The audition repertoire for coaches that I mentioned: Mozart-- Le nozze di Figaro 2nd Act Finale; Così fan tutte 1st Act Finale Frenc...
Oct 24, 2012•38 min
Olivier Bettens takes us through the pronunciation of French in the 17th Century with a scene from Armide. We talk about some exceptional words that are the same in modern pronunciation, alexandrines , the imperfect verb tense and a fifth nasal vowel. We got through as many rules as we could in the past 2 episodes, but there is a lot of information on this subject, so to find out more, check out Olivier's website, Chantez-vous francais? Armide was written by dramatist/librettist Philippe Quinaul...
Sep 27, 2012•24 min
This week we focus on 16th Century French with specialist Olivier Bettens. Our text is "Mignonne allons voir si la rose" by Pierre de Ronsard, and we discuss the differences between 16th Century and Modern French pronunciation and spelling. I had some problems with a previous posting of this, so I'm hoping that this new post will work--fingers crossed! Pierre de Ronsard was a very famous and prolific poet in 16th Century France, one of a group of 7 poets, called the Pleiades, dedicated to bringi...
Sep 26, 2012•28 min
Simon Neal is back with us this week discussing the text "The Vagabond". We go through the text, focusing on the problem with Ls and Rs in English, dealing with pianissimi and why we should sing pure Italianate vowels in every language. I'll also talk about a phonetic concept for unstressed I (between the closed [i] and open [I] sounds) that Jan & Catherine McDaniel (English diction teachers at the Bass School of Music , Oklahoma City University) sent me, the SCHWI. " The Vagabond " is the f...
Sep 09, 2012•35 min
It's the time of year when opera seasons and school years start, so it's time for The Diction Police to get back on track, too! This week and next our topic is English Diction with British baritone Simon Neal, who is here in Dresden singing in Henze's opera We Come To The River . Our text for today is A. E. Housman's " Loveliest of Trees " and we concentrate on the multiple phonetic functions of the letter O in English, final Y in words like "twenty" and "fifty" and a little bit about legato sin...
Aug 30, 2012•35 min
Since I just spent the weekend preparing for an upcoming Lieder recital with Mirko Roschkowski , of course I couldn't let him off the hook without talking some German Diction with us! This week's texts are two Schubert songs with mythological characters " Ganymed " (poem by Goethe) and " Der Atlas " (poem by Heinrich Heine). We concentrate on when NG is phonetically [ng] and not [ŋ], the prefixes UN- and AN- and review a few favorite topics like closed and open E's, glottals and the unvoiced gen...
May 22, 2012•36 min
Russian Diction is back this week--Katja Sapega Klein discusses the texts to Olga's Aria from Евгений Онегин ( Yevgeniy Onegin ) and Tchaikovsky's "Нам звёзды кроткие сияли", the last song of his Opus 60. Our focus this time is on what happens when 2 vowels come together in Russian, the devoicing (or not!) of consonants and double soft consonant/vowel combinations. Olga's aria, "Ах, Таня, Таня! Всегда мечтаешь ты... Я не способна к грусти томной" can be found through an online libretto for Евген...
May 06, 2012•35 min
We're sticking with English Diction and Jason Nedecky this week, discussing the text to "Music for a While". Our focus is on how to handle R's ([ʀ], [r], [ɾ] and the burred R [ɹ]), a little bit about glottals, a review of some of the topics from last week and voiced consonants at the ends of words. I also gave some tips on studying foreign languages, which I'll add to the 7 Steps to Learn Music page. Henry Purcell 's " Music for a While " was written as incidental music to John Dryden and Nathan...
Apr 26, 2012•29 min
The Diction Police is now officially in its third year! Thank you so much to all listeners around the world--the audience has more than doubled in its second year, and I'd love to say that again next year, so I'm asking everyone to please spread the word: share on Facebook, post and write comments on the Facebook page, tweet on Twitter, send the link to your singer/coach friends and post comments on iTunes so that more people can find The Diction Police and benefit from it! Thank you! This week ...
Apr 17, 2012•34 min
This week Swedish soprano Gisela Stille is with us to discuss the texts "Längtan heter min arvedel" and "I drömmen du är mig nära". We concentrate on the fun rounded H [ɧ], what I keep calling the C that turns back in over itself (but is officially called C with a curl ) [ɕ], some of the differences between colloquial speech and lyric diction and a reminder of some spelling rules. At the end of the episode, I also compare some of the sounds of Swedish and Norwegian. Both of our poets today were ...
Mar 09, 2012•30 min
Episode 55 is the end of my interview on Czech diction with Lucie Ceralová, this time with the Janáček's "Letí, straka letí". We concentrate on the letter C [ts] (which maintains it's own sound when followed by K), consonants that need a j-glide when followed by ě and the voicing and devoicing of consonants, as well as consonant pairs. "Letí, straka letí " is No. 19 in Leoš Janáček's song cycle Zápisník zmizelého ( The Diary of One Who Vanished ). The texts were all published anonymously in the ...
Feb 23, 2012•23 min
Since I'm in rehearsals for a Czech opera right now, it only seems fair that we discuss Czech diction this week! Mezzo-soprano Lucie Ceralova is here with the text "Oblak a mrákota jest vůkol něho", focusing on devoicing consonants, vocalic L and R, the palatalized N [ɲ], D [ ɟ] or [d] and T [c] or [t] and a few ways to practice our favorite Czech consonant ř. " Oblak a mrákota jest vůkol něho " is the first song in Dvořak's Biblické Písně (Biblical Songs), taken from the Book of Psalms of the K...
Feb 15, 2012•28 min
This week, bass Ketil Hugaas talks us through the consonants and consonant clusters in Norwegian, through two songs by Edvard Grieg , "Sang til juletræet" and "En svane". The retroflex phonetic symbols that we talk about are RD [ɖ ], RL [ɭ], RN [ɳ] , RS [ʂ] and RT [ʈ], all with tails flaring off to the right. We also come across NG [ŋ] and GN [ŋn] as well as KJ and TJ [ç] (which I want to research more!). " Sang til juletræ et " is a Christmas song, with a text by Johan Krohn. The text was also ...
Feb 08, 2012•29 min
Since the Swedish episodes were so popular, it's time to move next door in Scandinavia--for the next 2 weeks bass Ketil Hugaas discusses Norwegian Diction with us. This week we're focusing on vowels with the text " Mens jeg venter ", a poem by Vilhelm Krag that was set by Edvard Grieg. Grieg's Opus 60 is a set of 5 songs to texts by Krag and is available on IMSLP along with links to purchase a copy. I found one YouTube of Birgit Nilsson singing this song, and it can also be found on iTunes on th...
Feb 02, 2012•26 min
We're sticking with German Diction again, with a crew of low-voiced men--basses Thorsten Grümbel and Georg Zeppenfeld, as well as baritone Christoph Pohl, return to discuss the texts to "Anakreons Grab" and "Wie Melodien zieht es mir". We concentrate on the long sentence structures in these poems, along with short unstressed closed Es and the vowel combination IE (which is usually [i:] but in these cases becomes [i:ə] or the transcription possibilities of [jə] or [iə]) at the end of a word. Goet...
Jan 25, 2012•36 min
Happy 2012! We're back from the holidays with German Diction. German actress Susanne Plassman discusses " Kennst du das Land " from Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and bass Georg Zeppenfeld talks about König Heinrich's Aria from Lohengrin , " Mein Herr und Gott " (scroll down a little beyond halfway to find the aria). The basis for this episode came from bass Thorsten Grümbel, and at his suggestion, we focus on [ ʃ ], [ ç ] and [ x ], as well as when ZU- at the beginning of a word isn't stre...
Jan 17, 2012•35 min
In the second of our two-part series on tongue exercises, Silke Kurpiers gives us a few more advanced exercises to try (some of which require pretzel sticks or straws) and goes more in-depth on practicing rolled Rs. Be sure to listen to Episode 48 first and get a handle on those exercises before trying these! Then for a treat, Silke shows us a few German tongue twisters to get things really moving: Zehn zahme Ziegen zogen zehn Zentner Zucker zum Zoo. Zwischen zwei Zwetschgenzweigen saßen zwei zw...
Dec 02, 2011•24 min
This is the first in a 2-part special edition of The Diction Police--all about tongue exercises! In this episode, Silke Kurpiers, a stage manager at the Semperoper, but also a trained professional speech therapist, gives us some basic tongue exercises to gain more independence of the tongue and train it in all directions. She also gives us some ideas to prepare for rolling Rs. The way this blog is set up, I can only attach one file to every blog posting, so for a pdf file of the exercises (which...
Dec 02, 2011•24 min
This week finishes off a series of episodes on many of the arias from Le nozze di Figaro . Coach Matteo Pais walks us through "E Susanna non vien... Dove sono" and "Bravo signor padrone... Se vuol ballare", focusing on open and closed E and O in every position. Opernführer has the libretto for Le nozze di Figaro (remember to click on libretto and then I for Italian!). For "Dove sono", scroll down to Recit and Aria No. 20 in the third act, and "Se vuol ballare" starts with the recit just before C...
Nov 23, 2011•30 min
We're back on German diction with bass Thorsten Grümbel and sopranos Netta Or and Karen Bandelow, focusing on glottals in German and some unstressed prefixes with open E (er-, her-, ver- and zer-), as well as reviewing a few things that we've talked about before, like the NG sound [ŋ], the unpronounced intervocalic H and some diphthongs. Our texts for this episode are " O Isis und Osiris " from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (I did not link this to the Opera Guide website because there are several typ...
Oct 23, 2011•36 min
In the second half of my interview with Simone di Felice, we concentrate on the Count's Aria "Hai già vinta la causa" from Le nozze di Figaro . We cover those assimilations of N again, as well as diphthongs and triphthongs, a few more verb forms and non-aspirated K, P and T. 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. 18, in Act 3. The book that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode i...
Oct 13, 2011•33 min
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]. T...
Oct 03, 2011•28 min
This is the second part of our 2-part series on Swedish diction, with mezzo-soprano Sofi Lorentzen discussing the text to Sibelius's Fågellek. This week we're talking about consonant combinations and clusters, including: DJ, GJ and HJ (all the j-glide); LG [lj]; GN [ŋn]; NG [ŋ] and NK [ŋk]; KJ and TJ as well as the soft K [ɕ]; SJ, SKJ, STJ and SK before soft vowels [ɧ]; and the R combinations RD [ɖ], RG [rj], RL [l], RN [ɳ], RS [ʂ] and RT [ʈ]. Our text for today, Fågellek , is by Finnish author ...
Sep 27, 2011•23 min
This week we're branching off into a new language--Swedish! In the first of a 2-part series, mezzo-soprano Sofi Lorentzen discusses the vowels and consonants of Swedish, with two songs from Sibelius' Opus 36, No. 4 "Säf, säf, susa" and No.1 "Svarta rosor". The new phonetic letters that we introduce this week are for the letter U [ʉː] & [ɵ] and for the soft K sound [ɕ]. " Säf, säf, susa " is a poem by Gustav Fröding , " Svarta rosor " by Ernst Josephson , a Swedish portrait painter . Composer...
Sep 19, 2011•34 min
