She Rises (The Original)

This week Swedish soprano Gisela Stille is with us to discuss the texts "Längtan heter min arvedel" and "I drömmen du är mig nära". We concentrate on the fun rounded H [ɧ], what I keep calling the C that turns back in over itself (but is officially called C with a curl) [ɕ], some of the differences between colloquial speech and lyric diction and a reminder of some spelling rules. At the end of the episode, I also compare some of the sounds of Swedish and Norwegian.

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Episode 55 is the end of my interview on Czech diction with Lucie Ceralová, this time with the Janáček's "Letí, straka letí". We concentrate on the letter C [ts] (which maintains it's own sound when followed by K), consonants that need a j-glide when followed by ě and the voicing and devoicing of consonants, as well as consonant pairs.

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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.

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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].

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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. The phonetic letters are mostly standard, except for the barred U [ʉ].

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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.

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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.

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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. And 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 Zwetschgen zweigen saßen zwei zwitschernde Schwalben.

Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische. Frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz.

Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid.

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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 and practiced 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.

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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. www.thedictionpolice.com