Welcome to The Diction Police! The intent of this podcast is to enhance singers' study of diction by hearing the texts of songs and arias spoken by native speakers, to give a broad range of opinions from native speakers on their own language and to give singers practical tools for practicing and learning foreign languages.
This podcast came about because a colleague in the States had asked for a recommendation on German diction books. In researching that for him, I found that there are many good diction books out there, but that books are limited to discussing diction in an abstract way. Here we'll bring diction rules to life!
My goal is to have a rotating cycle of the main languages we sing in, including German, French, Italian and Russian, along with Spanish, English (British and American) and Czech, as well as to broaden our awareness of any Western languages with interesting songs and arias (e.g. Hungarian and Swedish so far)--if I can find guests to discuss them, I will post them! If you have any questions, or any specific topics you would like me to cover, please feel free to leave a comment or write to me at ellen@ellenrissinger.com