Episodes
Wednesday Feb 15, 2012
Episode 54
Wednesday Feb 15, 2012
Wednesday Feb 15, 2012
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 Kralice Bible, which is the Czech equivalent to the English King James Bible or the German Luther Bible. This text can also be found in Timothy Cheek's Singing in Czech, with a translation and the IPA. The tongue twisters that we talked about at the end are:
- Třista třicet tři stříbrných stříkaček stříkalo přes třista třicet tři stříbrných střech.
- Strč prst skrz krk.
Wednesday Feb 08, 2012
Episode 53
Wednesday Feb 08, 2012
Wednesday Feb 08, 2012
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 juletræet" is a Christmas song, with a text by Johan Krohn. The text was also published set to a folk melody in the Norwegian First Reading Book for Elementary School back in 1892. "En svane" is a poem by Henrik Ibsen, one of the founders of modernism in theater. There are many recordings of En svane--on YouTube, I found Håkan Hagegård and Warren Jones and a live performance of Jussi Björling with Frederick Schauwecker along with many others. As always, please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter (@dictionpolice) or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Thursday Feb 02, 2012
Episode 52
Thursday Feb 02, 2012
Thursday Feb 02, 2012
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 the recordings Edvard Grieg Complete Songs Vol 1 with various artists, Grieg: Complete Songs Vol. 2 with Monica Groop and Ilmo Ranta (the entire Opus 60) as well as Grieg: Songs and Lieder with Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg (just "Mens jeg venter"). Most of the information that I gathered in preparing for this episode came from Wikipedia's Norwegian Phonology page as well as Omniglot. The phonetic letters are mostly standard, except for the barred U [ʉ]. Otherwise, we find
- a [ɑ]
- å [ɔ]
- æ [æ]
- e [ɛ, ə] according to the websites, there is also a closed [e], but not as closed as the German sound
- i [i, I]
- o [u, o]
- ø [ø]
- u [ʉ]
- y [y]
Wednesday Jan 25, 2012
Episode 51
Wednesday Jan 25, 2012
Wednesday Jan 25, 2012
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. Goethe's "Anakreons Grab" refers to the ancient Greek poet, Anacreon--I also found a nice blog post entitled "What I like about this song". Klaus Groth's poem "Wie Melodien zieht es mir" is most famously set by Brahms (in fact, it's the opening music for the podcast!), but Charles Ives also set this poem, as well as 17 other German poems, several of which have been recorded by Thomas Hampson. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Tuesday Jan 17, 2012
Episode 50
Tuesday Jan 17, 2012
Tuesday Jan 17, 2012
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 stressed. If you haven't already heard Georg Zeppenfeld sing this role (because I posted it on the Facebook page several weeks ago), here is the YouTube link to the Bayreuth performance last summer--Mein Herr und Gott starts at 5:26. The entire production was broadcast on TV here in Europe, and it's posted on YouTube in it's entirety. There's also a little opera karaoke link, in case you would like to sing this aria yourself! I found some YouTube clips with 2 singers who connect Kennst du (Birgit Nilsson with John Wustman, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with Gerald Moore), as well as some who separate Kennst/du (Christa Ludwig with Erik Werba, Juliane Banse with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin). The blog Study Hacks has a few postings on Multitasking. There is also an article called The Myth of Multitasking at The New Atlantis. The Diction Police is now on Twitter! Look for me at @dictionpolice. As always, please feel free to leave comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, now on Twitter :-) or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Friday Dec 02, 2011
Episode 49-Special Edition-Tongue Exercises
Friday Dec 02, 2011
Friday Dec 02, 2011
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 zwitschernde Schwalben.
- Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische. Frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz.
- Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid.
You can find these (with some slight variations in text) and more German tongue twisters at the Wikipedia page entitled Zungenbrecher. Along the left side of that page, you can also find fun tongue twisters in many other languages, and they seem to have even more at the actual entry for Tongue Twisters, so once you've mastered these you can move on to Italian, Spanish, etc! Look for the pdf drawings of the tongue exercises in a separate blog entry entitled Special Edition Download. And keep your eyes on the Facebook page--Silke and I are planning to create a YouTube video so you can actually see these tongue exercises in action rather than just listening! I'll let you know when we get that posted. Since we are headed into crunch time at the opera house and most people are in finals weeks, on university break or dealing with a heavy schedule of holiday concerts, The Diction Police will be back mid-January with all-new episodes. Please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with questions, comments or suggestions. Have a wonderful and blessed holiday season! See you in 2012 :-)
Friday Dec 02, 2011
Episode 48-Special Edition-Tongue Exercises
Friday Dec 02, 2011
Friday Dec 02, 2011
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 Silke drew by hand!) look for the blog entry entitle Special Edition Download. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for me, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Wednesday Nov 23, 2011
Episode 47
Wednesday Nov 23, 2011
Wednesday Nov 23, 2011
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 Cavatina No. 3 close to the beginning. Here is the Wikipedia article on Italian language, in case you want to read a little about the acute accent (´) and the circumflex accent (^) in Italian, just click on Writing System in the Contents box and it will take you there immediately. The other resources I mentioned in this episode are the Jillians Michaels podcast, The Collaborative Piano Blog (a must-read for coaches and very useful for everyone!), the book Talent is Overrated and a website devoted to learning better study habits called Study Hacks. Much of the research on the habits of elite performers refer to a study done with the students at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. Happy Thanksgiving! Ellen
Sunday Oct 23, 2011
Episode 46
Sunday Oct 23, 2011
Sunday Oct 23, 2011
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 typos there), and "In dem Schatten meiner Locken" from Wolf's Spanisches Liederbuch. I dug through many YouTube clips in researching this episode, so I wanted to include them here. For "O Isis und Osiris" I found Rene Pape (who lives in Dresden and drops in on performances sometimes!), Kurt Moll, Gottlieb Frick and Hans-Peter König (an old colleague of mine from Düsseldorf who sings all over the world, especially the Wagner repertoire). For "In dem Schatten meiner Locken" Elisabeth Grümmer with Hertha Klust uses all of the glottals we talked about, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf has two posted clips, one with Gerald Moore and one with Wilhelm Furtwängler where she uses considerably more glottals than the other performance, and I also found a clip of Lotte Lehmann (with unknown pianist) who doesn't seem to use glottals at all. I also specifically looked for Fischer-Dieskau using glottals and found several examples--the most obvious were in Erlkönig when he says "den Erlkönig" and in "Die Forelle" when he says "Doch endlich". Enjoy this little study on glottals! I'll be in the States giving some master classes for the next few weeks, so the podcast will be back up mid-November for a few episodes before the holidays, but in the meantime, please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com
Thursday Oct 13, 2011
Episode 45
Thursday Oct 13, 2011
Thursday Oct 13, 2011
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 is Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin. My personal favorite Italian Diction books, which I discussed last week and this, are Evalina Colorni's Singer's Italian: A Manual of Diction and Phonetics and David Adams' A Handbook of Diction for Singers (which also covers French and German--and he was my diction teacher at Cincinnati!). Plus, the useful practice tip I menioned at the end of the episode is thanks to my first diction teacher, Larry Marietta! I'll try to get next week's episode out on time, but we're in technical rehearsals for Alcina right now, so I can make no promises. I'll keep updating the Facebook page with my progress. In the meantime, feel free to contact me with any comments, questions or suggestions here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com