By Ellen Rissinger
Practical Diction for Classical Singers
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...
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...
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...
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],...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Here is the pdf file with hand drawings of each of the tongue exercises that Silke Kurpiers gave us in Episodes 48 and 49. www.thedictionpolice.com
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...
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...
In the second half of my interview with Simone di Felice, we concentrate on the 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...
Italian Vocal Coach Simone di Felice is with us to discuss more arias from Le nozze di Figaro--since he and I had such a long conversation with a ton of useful information, it will be spread out over two episodes!...
This is the second part of our 2-part series on Swedish diction, with mezzo-soprano Sofi Lorentzen discussing the text to Sibelius's Fågellek. This week we're talking about consonant combinations and clusters, including: DJ, GJ and HJ (all the j-glide); LG [lj];...
This week we're branching off into a new language--Swedish! In the first of a 2-part series, Mezzo-soprano Sofi Lorentzen discusses the vowels and consonants of Swedish, through thte texts of two songs from Sibelius' Opus 36, No. 4 "Säf, säf,...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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. www.thedictionpolice.com
This week we're back 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...
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, the earliest opera to remain in the standard repertoire. We focus on not accidentally doubling...
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. www.thedictionpolice.com
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...
This week is the other half of my conversation with Tuscan tenor Giorgio Berrugi. Our texts today are Christoph Willibald Gluck's "O del mio dolce ardor" and Petrarch's Sonnet 104, "Pace non trovo." We talk about whether or not to...
Castilian Spanish is our focus this week, with Basque soprano Vanessa Goikoetxea. Our texts for today are the Zarzuela tenor aria "No puede ser" and the Obradors song "Al amor". This time we are concentrating on the S, C and...
This week we are back to German Diction with vocal coach Michael Schütze and baritone Christoph Pohl. We focus on the text to Agathe's Aria "Wie nahte mir der Schlummer... Leise, leise" from Der Freischütz and Heinrich Heine's poem "Wenn...
Our first episode on Czech diction! This week conductor Tomá Netopil is our guest, discussing two texts from Rusalka, the Song to the Moon (Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém) and the Prince's first act aria (Vidino divná). Since many people are...
Happy 2011! We're starting back up again with a discussion of Un'aura amorosa and De' miei bollenti spiriti with tenor Giorgio Berrugi. We concentrate on some common suffixes with stressed o (-oro, -ore and -ose), intervocalic S and using consonants...
Before we go on holiday break, I wanted to get another Special Edition of The Diction Police, this time on Bel Canto music. Tenor Javier Camarena and basso buffo Carlo Lepore give us tips on how to practice coloratura and...
This week we are back to Russian Diction, with Siberian-born tenor Andrej Dunaev, discussing the texts to two Rachmaninoff songs, Opus 14 No 1 "Я жду тебя" (I Wait for You) and No 14 "Весенние воды" (Spring Waters). We concentrate...
We finish up our 2-part series on Hungarian diction this week, concentrating on Zoltán Kodály's "A csitári hegyek alatt" with Zoltán Nyári and Henrik Nánási. This week our focus is on the consonants, especially the fun combinations of GY [Ɉ],...
This week is the first of a 2-part series on Hungarian diction, discussing some text from Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle (Kéksakállú herceg vára) with conductor Henrik Nánási and tenor Zoltán Nyári. Here is a link to an online libretto--we chose the...
This week we are discussing long and short syllables in German with mezzo-soprano Tanja Baumgartner, tenor Virgil Hartinger and Uta Mücksch, a prompter at the Semperoper. The texts for today's episode are "Kommt ein schlanker Bursch gegangen" from Der Freischütz...
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], the letter X, and...
Episode 20 is our first discussion of Spanish Lyric Diction, with Pablo Assante, the chorus master at the Semperoper in Dresden. We discuss some of the differences between Spanish and Italian, as well as the differences between Castilian and Argentinean...
Italian Diction is back this week with conductor Matteo Beltrami from Milan. The texts for this week are "Tutte le feste al tempio" from the second act duet in Rigoletto and Dorabella's "Smanie implacabili" from Così fan tutte, and we...
Today we're talking with Siberian-born tenor Andrej Dunaev about the text to Lensky's Aria from Yevgény Onégin. We concentrate on the vowels e [jɛ] and ё [jo], the hard consonant ж [ʒ] and the soft sign ь.
Since we talked so much last week about studying the diction of your native language, I thought it only fitting that we discuss a little English Diction today! Our guests are Mark Lawson, an American coach on the music staff...
In Episode 16 we discuss the texts to "Avant de quitter" and Marguerite's "Jewel Aria" from Gounod's Faust with French-Canadian coach Nathalie Doucet. We talk about some letter combinations that make the J-glide (or Jot), compare the open and closed...
This week we concentrate on the German CH in all its forms, with mezzo-soprano Tanja Baumgartner and tenors Virgil Hartinger and Mirko Roschkowski. The texts for this week are the Komponist (Composer) Aria from Ariadne auf Naxos and the Brahms...
Here's the first episode of the new opera season, a discussion of Italian recitative with coach Felice Venanzoni. We focus on the recit before "Là ci darem la mano" and the aria "Non mi dir" from Mozart's Don Giovanni. We...
In this special edition of The Diction Police, we discuss studying and working in both the US and Germany with Americans Stephanie Woodling Bucher and Timothy Oliver and Australian James Martin. We talk about how our careers got started and...
This week we discuss German diction with Mirko Roschkowski and Clemens Posselt, working through the texts to Im wunderschönen Monat Mai from Schumann's Dichterliebe and O du, mein holder Abendstern from Wagner's Tannhäuser. We focus on the combinations NG, SP...
Back to German Diction, with the texts to Strauss' Zueignung and the first two poems of Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben. Our guests this week are Rainer Mühlbach and Stephanie Atanasov, and we review some sounds that we've already talked about,...
This week we talk about Russian Diction with Maria Fontosh. First we discuss the text to Tatjana's Aria from Yevgeny (Eugene) Onegin and then we go through the alphabet to try to take some of the fear out of reading...
French Diction is our topic this week--we concentrate on the texts to À Chloris by Reynaldo Hahn and Chanson à boire from Ravel's Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, with a discussion of the nasal vowels and bright and dark As with...
Auch kleine Dinge and Die Nacht are our texts this week, with Nadja Mchantaf and Mirko Roschkowski. We talk a little about what to do with Ts and Ds that follow one another ("und duftet doch"), some open and closed...