She Rises (The Original)

Gilles Ragon is back to discuss French Diction with the text to "Klein-Zach" from Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann. Our focus is on what happens when the same vowel sound appears back-to-back with no consonant between them, liaison, and some exceptional pronunciations in French.

The libretto for Les contes d'Hoffmann can be found at the Opera Guide. Make sure to click on L for libretto and F for French (because it defaults back every time) and then scroll down to Act I scene 4--the aria starts with Hoffmann's "Il était une fois."

The new projects that I announced on this episode are 

The Diction Police: Special Diction Unit (SDU)

Here we offer: 

Video Tutorials on songs and arias, including Diction Police-style interviews with leading diction expertsIPA transcriptions with word-for-word and poetic translations of texts from Art Song, opera and oratorioTranslations into English, French and GermanDiction TipsSkype coachings

The Diction Police: By the Book

Our new webinar classes on lyric diction! A great refresher for professionals, an excellent resource for diction teachers looking for new resources for their classes, and a perfect introduction to lyric diction for young singers.

Our first Webinar session on French Lyric Diction will be held June 2016. Registration opens soon, so keep checking back for details!

And don't forget that François Germain will be giving a master class on French Lyric Diction for the Classical Singer Convention in Boston on May 28th! For exact details, check out the Facebook Event page.

Please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, via Twitter, or directly at [email protected]

This week, French tenor Gilles Ragon works through Don José's aria, "La fleur que tu m'avais jetée", from Carmen with us. We concentrate on the letter "e" and how to tell whether it's the open epsilon [ɛ], the closed lower case [e] or the schwa [ə]. We talk about the accent grave (è) and accent circonflex (ê) which both open the vowel to [ɛ] and the accent aigu (é) which closes it to [e].

www.thedictionpolice.com

In this episode we finish up our conversation with Martin Koch, with the text "Wenn sich zwei Herzen scheiden" and an exercise from Dr. Augustin Ulrich Nebert's article "Das einzigartige -IG". Obviously we are focusing on the ending -IG again as well as devoicing/unvoicing final consonants and the voiced initial S.

www.thedictionpolice.com

This episode is the beginning of a conversation with German tenor Martin Koch. With the text to Mendelssohn's "Frage", we focus on the -IG suffix, whether to roll an R or to use the near-open central vowel [ɐ] (which I keep calling the upside down bright A) and a few notable exceptions with long, closed vowels followed by two consonants.

www.thedictionpolice.com

This is a mini-episode with some tips on learning how to roll Rs. Kerry Deal (from the faculty of Boston Conservatory and MIT) and Michael Strauss (a vocal coach with New England Conservatory and Boston Conservatory) talk about the problems we have rolling our Rs and give us some exericises and tricks to help us practice! www.thedictionpolice.com

In the second episode of our two-part discussion of Modern Greek Diction, Lydía Zervános works through the texts Κάτω στον Άγιο Σίδερο and Ο Ναός. We focus on the letters Gamma γ and Kappa κ and the vowel digraphs: αι [ε]; ει, οι and υι which all become [i]; αυ [av] or [af] and ευ [εv] or [εf]; and ου [u], along with the accent marking ´ and the diaeresis ¨ .

www.thedictionpolice.com

Είμαι πάρα πολύ χαρουμένη για αυτά τα επισόδια! This episode and the next will be on one of my favorite topics--Modern Greek Diction! On this episode, baritone Aris Argiris works through the Greek alphabet with us, through the text Κόρες της Αττικής.

www.thedictionpolice.com

In the second half of my conversation with Italian bass Maurizio Muraro, we discuss the text to Don Bartolo's aria "A un dottor della mia sorte" from Il barbiere di Siviglia. This time we concentrate on the rule of "raddoppiamento sintattico" (called phrasal doubling in English), the combination GLI [ʎ], S before a voiced consonant (which becomes a voiced [z]) and when to roll or not roll Rs!

Italian bass Maurizio Muraro, discusses Banco's aria from Macbeth in this episode, focusing on the palatal consonants GN [ɲ] and GL [λ], the combinations NG [ŋg] and NC [ŋk], double consonants and phrasal doubling, plus the suffixes -MENTO and -MENTE with stressed closed E [e]. www.thedictionpolice.com

We're sticking with Händel's Messiah this week, with soprano Amanda Majeski discussing "Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion" and the four short soprano recitatives before the chorus "Glory to God", followed by the rest of my conversation with Jan and Catherine McDaniel of the Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University. This week's episode focuses on English diphthongs and triphthongs, implosion and explosion of final Ds and Ts before another T and the specific words "righteous" and "with" (which can be the voiced delta [δ]) or the unvoiced theta [θ]). www.thedictionpolice.com