The Diction Police

Episode 41

Matteo Pais, coach and music coordinator of the Scuola dell'opera italiana in Bologna, joins us this week to talk about two arias from Le nozze di Figaro, Susanna's 4th act aria "Deh, vieni, non tardar" and Cherubino's first aria "Non so più cosa son". We concentrate on Rs in every position, the letter G and what to do when there are millions of vowels in a row. The libretto for Le nozze di Figaro is can be found at the Opera Guide website here--sometimes it defaults to the main entry page, so you may have to click on Libretto and then on the letter "I" for Italian. "Deh, vieni, non tardar" is almost at the end, Recit and Aria Nr. 28, while Cherubino's aria is close to the beginning, Aria Nr. 6. Le nozze di Figaro is based on Pierre Beaumarchais' Le mariage de Figaro, the second in a trilogy of plays (which starts with Le Barbier de Séville). The librettist for Mozart's opera, Lorenzo da Ponte led a very colorful life that's worth looking into as well! As always, please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 34

Early music specialist Andrea Marchiol is our guest this week, discussing the texts to "Piangerò" from Händel's Giulio Cesare and the Prologue to Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. We concentrate on the accidental doubling of consonants, open and closed E's and O's (as usual!) and talk a little about the different styles of recitative throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. The Giulio Cesare libretto is here--along the left hand margin, scroll down and click on Act 3 Scene 3 for "E pur così in un giorno...Piangerò". The text to L'Orfeo is here, and our text is La Musica's Prologo. The websites I mentioned early on in this episode are LibriVox, the audiobook equivalent to Project Gutenberg. They have audiobooks in many different languages and offer them through iTunes as well. LibriVox is also looking for volunteers to read and record literature in the public domain--a perfect way to practice your own diction if you have the time! The other site I mentioned is dict.cc, an online dictionary that relies on users to post translations. There are no phonetics, but there are sample recordings of the words and a vocabulary training flashcard program. As always, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 31

This week is the other half of my conversation with Tuscan tenor Giorgio Berrugi. Our texts today are Christoph Willibald Gluck's "O del mio dolce ardor" and Petrarch's Sonnet 104, "Pace non trovo." We talk about whether or not to use glottals in Italian (spoiler-the answer is NO!), some irregular verbs you may run across, some standard suffixes with stressed E and the importance of knowing every meaning of your lines in an opera. You can find both texts for today at the Lied and Art Song Texts Page. "O del mio dolce ardor" is from the opera Paride ed Elena, a collaboration of Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi, who also wrote the libretto for Orfeo ed Euridice. Francesco Petrarca's "Pace non trovo" is one of his sonnets to Laura, the married woman whom he loved--Wikipedia even has an entire section devoted to Petrarch and Laura. I also found a short essay on Liszt and Petrarch at a website entitled The Engines of our Ingenuity. The Lied and Art Song Texts Page lists "Pace non trovo" as Sonnet CXXXIV, but every other source that I found lists it in modern numerals as 104, so I've used that number on this episode. For people interested in reading some of the classic literature online, check out Project Gutenberg, Classic Authors dot Net or The Literature Page. Kindle for PC or MAC is also available as a free download from Amazon, if you would like books in that format but don't have a Kindle (I personally have this on my Netbook, so that I can carry it around with me). Anyone interested in studying more mythology can get started at Wikipedia's Roman Mythology and Greek Mythology pages, as well as Encyclopedia Mythica, Myth Web and Theoi Greek Mythology or check out Edith Hamilton's book Mythology. As always, please feel free to contact me here, through the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with any questions or comments.

Episode 27

Happy 2011! We're starting back up again with a discussion of "Un'aura amorosa" and "De' miei bollenti spiriti" with tenor Giorgio Berrugi. We concentrate on some common suffixes with stressed o (-oro, -ore and -oso), intervocalic S and using consonants to create expression. Here are links to the libretti for Così fan tutte (scroll down to Aria No. 17) and La Traviata (scroll down to the opening of Act II). Just for the sake of clarity, on this episode we translated the word "esca" as "hook", but I double-checked this with my Harpers Collins Sansoni dictionary and the definition there is "bait, enticement". The language lesson website I mention in Episode 27 is Verbal Planet. There you can set up online Skype lessons with teachers from all over the world at your convenience. Please feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with any questions or comments!

Episode 19

Italian Diction is back this week with conductor Matteo Beltrami from Milan. The texts for this week are "Tutte le feste al tempio" from the second act duet in Rigoletto and Dorabella's "Smanie implacabili" from Così fan tutte, and we talk about when to voice or unvoice the S, the imperfect verb ending -EVA and the problem of rolling Rs! Maestro Beltrami also talks about the importance of text in recitative. For the text to "Tutte le festi al tempio" click here and scroll down to No 10-Scena e Duetto. For the text to "Smanie implacabili" click here and scroll down to just before No 11-Aria. In case you want to read about the life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, here is the Wikipedia link. There will be no episodes for the next two weeks since I'll be in the US doing some master classes, but TDP will be back on October 15! As always, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 14

Welcome back from the summer! Here's the first episode of the new opera season, a discussion of Italian recitative with coach Felice Venanzoni. We focus on the recit before "Là ci darem la mano" and the aria "Non mi dir" from Mozart's Don Giovanni. We talk about many diction details, but also about recitatives in general and how to approach learning and performing them. There is an online libretto of Don Giovanni here, just scroll down after Nr. 6 Aria for the recitative and Nr. 23 Recitativo ed Aria for "Non mi dir". On this episode, I also talk about 7 steps to learn music and have added a page to this website to list them out and explain them a little more fully than in the podcast. I hope you find them useful! You can find this page by clicking here or following the permanent link to the right. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page, or to write me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 7

This week we work through 2 arias from Il barbiere di Siviglia--"La calunnia" and "Una voce poco fa". Our guest is Andrea Sanguineti, an Italian coach/conductor with the Staatsoper Hannover, and we talk about the letters C and G in Italian and some standard suffixes with stressed E and O.

There is an online libretto for Il barbiere di Siviglia here, just click under Act 1, Scene 5 Cavatina for Una voce poco fa, or Act 1, Scene 8 Aria for La calunnia. If you are interested in the podcast "Audio storie, fiabe e favole per bambini", you'll find the link here. 

Please feel free to leave comments here, on the Facebook page, or to contact me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 2

In Episode 2 we concentrate on Le Violette (from 24 Italian Songs and Arias), Il fervido desiderio (Bellini), and O del mio amato ben (Donaudy), and discuss some basic rules of Italian diction with Fabio Centanni, an Italian coach who accompanies Renata Scotto's Opera Studio in Rome! The texts are available from the LiederNet Archive by clicking on the titles above.  

Feel free to leave comments here or you can write to me with specific questions at ellen@ellenrissinger.com