Episode 21

French-Swiss soprano Nathalie de Montmollin is back to talk about three poems of Paul Verlaine, one of the greatest French poets of the 19th century. We concentrate on some of the mixed vowels, especially [œ] and [ø] again, the letter X, and go over some of the confusing spellings that make up French! Our texts for today are "Mandoline", "Prison" (or "Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit"), and "Green". At Art Song Central you can find the music for many art songs in pdf form, and also the IPA as well. I'm a big fan of doing your own transcriptions, but these can be a great free resource to check your work. Here are the links, if you are interested in finding out more about Antoine Watteau (on Wikipedia, or at the Watteau website) and the Fete galante, the Commedia dell'arte or Paul Verlaine. If you want to practice reading French, I found this website called Verlaine 20 poèmes expliquées and had promised to repost the website with liaison rules in French. Please feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page, or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com