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 40

English Diction is our topic this week, covering the texts to "The Roadside Fire" and the aria "Iris, hence away" from Händel's Semele with vocal coach Mark Lawson, contralto Rebecca Raffell and tenor Donald George. Our focus is on what to do with Rs, WH words, the crazy spelling in English and some differences between American Standard and British Received pronunciation. Some of the new phonetic symbols referred to on this episode are [ɝ] and [ɚ] (for those Rs in diphthongs and triphthongs) and [ɒ] (for the British open back rounded vowel). The Roadside Fire is the 11th poem in Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs of Travel and Other Verses (although most of us know it as the 3rd song in Ralph Vaughan Williams' song cycle Songs of Travel). Most of Stevenson's novels, poems and essays are in the public domain and available as free downloads at Project Gutenberg. Here is a libretto for Händel's Semele, for Juno's Aria, scroll down to Accompagnato Nr. 31 "Awake Saturnia from thy lethargy" and Air Nr. 34 "Iris, hence away", skipping over Iris' Recitative in the middle. iTunes University is a free way to "visit" university classes--they have topics ranging from all the classical to modern languages, history, Fine Arts, mathematics, humanities... pretty much anything that universities offer, there's a class on iTunes U for it. Just go to your iTunes Store and look across the top for the heading iTunes U. I also mention the term "Lingua franca" at the beginning of the podcast, and I learned that phrase from iTunes U! Just as a reminder, I refer quite a bit to the two main books on English Diction, Madeleine Marshall's The Singer's Manual of English Diction which has been the standard for many years, and Kathryn LaBouff's Singing and Communicating in English, which covers the differences between American Standard, British Received and the Mid-Atlantic Dialect in great detail. Feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 39

Happy neue Spielzeit! We're back from summer vacation discussing German diction, covering the texts to "Die Lotoblume" and "Liebst du um Schönheit" with tenor Mirko Roschkowski and coach Hans Sotin. We concentrate on the assimilation of consonants and also discuss and compare some common open and closed Es with soprano Karen Bandelow. "Die Lotosblume" is a Heinrich Heine poem set by many composers, the most familiar setting by Robert Schumann (part of Myrthen, Op. 25). The poem "Liebst du um Schönheit" was written by Friedrich Rückert, and also set by many composers--the ones by Gustav Mahler (as the 5th song in the cycle Rückert Lieder) and Clara Schumann are both performed very often. Following a fellow podcaster's advice, I'm trying something new with the audio format, to improve the quality but also lower the file size. I'm not very technologically adept, so hopefully it will work correctly this first time, please let me know if there's a problem! Feel free to contact me with comments or suggestions either here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 38 - Special Edition

We're back to basics again today! Conductor Jonathan Darlington reminds us what all the other markings in the score are about--from tempo indications to metronome markings to rubato and col canto, we discuss what composers are trying to tell us, and compare the markings a little between Italian, French and German. There are many online dictionaries of musical terms, but the best one I found for our purposes was from the Dolmetsch Organization. They have all the terms we referred to in this podcast, and also have the French and German equivalents most of the time. There are also many musical dictionaries in book form and for Kindle (since I don't own one myself, I don't know which to recommend, so make sure to get a look inside it first). I'll be on "vacation" with the International Performing Arts Institute in Kiefersfelden, Germany, and the University of Miami's Program in Salzburg, Austria, for the next few weeks, so the podcast will start back up again on August 28. Feel free to contact me with questions or comments here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com     Meanwhile, have a fabulous, relaxing summer!

Episode 37

This week, Spanish bel canto tenor José Bros works through the texts of "La maja y el ruiseñor" and "La maja dolorosa No. 3" with us. We're concentrating on diphthongs and other instances when vowels in Spanish come together, which happens quite a lot! We also talk about the difference between [nj] and [ɲ]. Here is the text for Enrique Granados' Goyescas (this libretto is sideways, so it's probably easier to print out to read!); the aria "La maja y el ruiseñor" starts Cadro III on page 28. The text for "La maja dolorosa No. 3" is here. For anyone interested in seeing Francisco Goya's paintings of Majos and Majas, this website contains photos of his complete works online. The idea for this podcast came from a posting on the Facebook page--I really do take suggestions and questions seriously, so please keep asking! I may not be able to honor all requests, but I do try to use the ideas that people have. Please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 36

Russian Diction is our topic this week--baritone Dmitri Vargin helps us work through the text to Onegin's aria "Вы мне писали... Когда бы жизнь домашним кругом". Our focus this time is on unstressed Os in every position. Finally there's a working link to this libretto that doesn't need to be downloaded! So here is the libretto for Евгений Онегин, scroll down to "page" 37 to find the recitative and aria for today. If you have the book Russian Songs and Arias, be aware of two typos in their transcription of this aria: In the first line, кругом has the wrong stressed syllable so the O is unstressed On the second page of it, the seventh line, годам also has the wrong stressed syllable so in this case the O is stressed. Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 35

This week we're covering German diction again, with baritone Christoph Pohl and vocal coach Michael Schütze, focusing on the texts to "Mondnacht" and "Die Mainacht". The episode started off being about open and closed Ü, and ended up branching out in a few different directions, including double consonants and open and closed U and I. The text to Josef von Eichendorff's poem "Mondnacht" can be found here. It has been set by many composers, but the version most people know best is by Robert Schumann in his Liederkreis Op 39. Our second text is "Die Mainacht", a poem by Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty. You'll notice that the text contains 4 verses, but we used the Brahms setting (which is probably the most famous) which only uses Verses 1, 3 and 4. We mention the ß in passing in this episode. If you need a refresher on that, check out episodes 8 and 22, where that topic is covered a little more in-depth. The University of Iowa website that I referred to is here. You can see the side-view tongue diagrams that many diction books contain here in motion, in English and Spanish as well as German. 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 33

In the second episode of our two-part discussion of French liaison, Dr. Francois Germain takes us through the text of "Chanson triste", with a focus on verbs in the future tense as well as the pronunciation of consonants in liaison. Chanson triste is one of Henri Duparc's early songs, set to a text by Henri Cazalis under the penname of Jean Lahor. The score to Chanson triste is also available online at the International Music Score Library--make sure that you know the copyright laws of your country before you download anything, in most of the world copyright is held 50-70 years after the composer's death. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Episode 32

Happy Anniversary to The Diction Police! I started this podcast on April 1, 2010, so this week marks the first episode of our second year! Episode 32 is the first of a two-part discussion with French vocal coach Francois Germain focusing mainly on liaisons, with some exceptional words in French and the pronunciation of future verbs. Our text this week is En sourdine, a Paul Verlaine poem. The resources that we talk about on this episode are Thomas Grubb's Singing in French and Pierre Bernac's The Interpretation of French Song, and I also found an article by Thomas Grubb entitled "What does the vocal coach do?" (in three parts Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) that was posted on Operagasm in March which includes a biography for Thomas Grubb at the end. For the website in French on liaison, either follow the link at the right under resources, or click here. Please feel free to leave questions or comments here, on the Facebook page or send them directly to me at ellen@ellenrissinger.com