The Diction Police (Ellen Rissinger)

Well, here it is! In Episode 1 we discuss the texts of "Heidenröslein" and "Der Gärtner" with Nadja Mchantaf and Hans Sotin, focusing on the long vowel [øː] and the short [œ], and talk with conductor Rainer Mühlbach about singing in German. Hope you enjoy it! The texts are available from the LiederNet Archive, "Heidenröslein" and "Der Gärtner".   Please feel free to leave comments here or to write to me at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 Cyrillic! We focus on a, я and unstressed o. The only online Russian libretto I found for Onegin is a zip file you can download at the end of the Wikipedia Article. This is the text I refer to when I mention "paragraphs" in the episode. The Wikipedia page for the Russian alphabet with a very general outline of spoken diction rules is here, and I also found another website where you can click to hear the letters pronounced here. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page, or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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, like Äs and Ls, and also talk about the prefix ZU- (so that no one will ever mispronounce "Zueignung" again!) and the suffix -IG. Texts for these songs can be found at The LiederNet Archive. If you have any questions or comments for me, feel free to leave them here, at the Facebook page or write me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 sound NG, SP at the beginning of words and a few regular inseparable prefixes. The text to "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai" is here, and I found an online libretto for Tannhäuser here. Just scroll down to the Zweite Szene for Wolfram's aria. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them here, on the Facebook page or contact me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 give some tips on how to prepare yourself for the professional world. The resources mentioned in the podcast include: Opera America, whose members have access to a comprehensive list of American opera companies and many international ones, including Young Artist information, chorus auditions, job listings and contact names and addresses throught Opera Source. Musical America, a yearly publication and website, which contains contact information for over 14,000 performing arts organizations in the United States and abroad. Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch, which is unfortunately still not available online anywhere I can find, but this book contains a comprehensive listing of theaters in the German-speaking countries, plus agencies and all performers working in those theaters (including me!). What the Fach?! The Definitive Guide for Opera Professionals in Germany, Austria and Switzerland by Philip Shepard. This book has interviews with professionals working in Europe, lists of agencies and houses, as well as a plethora of information about setting up audition tours and moving to, working and living in Germany. You can also follow What the Fach on Twitter. NYIOP is the acronym for the New York International Opera Auditions. For a rather substantial fee, singers may have the opportunity to sing for groups of international opera company representatives, after a screening audition. The fee pays for the travel and housing of the panel, which is still considerably less than the costs accrued by an audition tour in Europe. While these auditions may not be for everyone, I do have several friends who have either gotten a fest contract, a guest contract or an invitation to audition in an opera house after having done the NYIOPs, so it has worked for some people. There are also NYIOPs set up in several different cities in Europe as well, including Vienna and Napoli. After this I'll be on break for the summer, so the next episode will be posted on August 20, 2010. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions at ellen@ellenrissinger.com Have a great summer!

Welcome back from the summer! 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 talk about many diction details, but also about recitatives in general and how to approach learning and performing them. There is an online libretto of Don Giovanni here, just scroll down after Nr. 6 Aria for the recitative and Nr. 23 Recitativo ed Aria for "Non mi dir". On this episode, I also talk about 7 steps to learn music and have added a page to this website to list them out and explain them a little more fully than in the podcast. I hope you find them useful! You can find this page by clicking here or following the permanent link to the right. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page, or to write me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 Lied "Von ewiger Liebe". You can find an online libretto for Ariadne auf Naxos here, just scroll down almost halfway to "Seien wir wieder gut", and for the text to "Von ewiger Liebe" click here or follow the link at the right to the Lieder and Art Songs Text Page. For those of you interested in the German version of "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock" click here! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them here, at the Facebook page or contact me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 OE, O-slash and the schwa, and discuss why you should study the diction of your own native language and some of the differences between Canadian-French and French spoken in France. For an online libretto to Faust click here. For Valentin's aria, "Avant de quitter", scroll down to No. 6-Scène et Récitatif, for Marguerite's "Jewel Aria" scroll down to No. 14-Air des bijoux, the recitative begins just above the aria. If you wanted to check out Podcast Francais Facile, click here--at the top of the page in the main picture you will see links for the levels débutant, intermédiaire and avancé. For the listening/fill-in exercises click here. I did try a few of the exercises, and no matter what answers I gave, when I clicked "check" it told me I got everything wrong! But you can check your work by looking under "voir la correction" to the left under each box. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for me, please write to me at the Facebook page, leave a comment here, or contact me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 of the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, and Aaron Pegram, an American tenor in the ensemble at the Semperoper in Dresden. Our texts today are "Take O Take Those Lips Away" and Stephen Foster's "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair". We concentrate on the American diphthongs and how to handle the Rs when singing in English. You can find the texts through the Lied and Art Song Text Page link at the right. On this episode, we talked about the standard textbook, Madeleine Marshall's The Singer's Manual of English Diction, which has been around for several decades. I also mentioned Kathryn LaBouff's book, Singing and Communicating in English, which includes separate sections for Mid-Atlantic, American and British pronunciation. A big thank you to everyone who has shared The Diction Police on their Facebook pages, word-of-mouth is the greatest commercial! And also many thanks to the people who have rated this podcast on iTunes, I really appreciate it! As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page, or to write me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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. For the text to Lensky's aria, you can download the libretto for the opera through the Wikipedia page here. Just scroll down to "External links" at the bottom and click on "Russian libretto in zip file for Word". I mention on the podcast that the Tenor Anthology has a lot of extra soft signs--I've discovered an older piano/vocal score online here (scroll down to page 58) that uses the old spellings including the hard sign (ъ) which we don't see much anymore. This letter is very similar to the soft sign (ь), and it seems that in the Anthology they use the same symbol for both, which is a little confusing; be sure to check the text with the libretto or the full score here (scroll down to page 115) if you are using this score to learn the aria. While there's never any singing on the actual podcast, I found a YouTube of Andrej singing Lensky's aria in Paris here. I really don't like the staging, but it's fine if you can ignore the woman on stage distracting the audience from the aria! Feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with any questions or comments.

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 talk about when to voice or unvoice the S, the imperfect verb ending -EVA and the problem of rolling Rs! Maestro Beltrami also talks about the importance of text in recitative. For the text to "Tutte le festi al tempio" click here and scroll down to No 10-Scena e Duetto. For the text to "Smanie implacabili" click here and scroll down to just before No 11-Aria. In case you want to read about the life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, here is the Wikipedia link. There will be no episodes for the next two weeks since I'll be in the US doing some master classes, but TDP will be back on October 15! As always, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

In Episode 2 we concentrate on Le Violette (from 24 Italian Songs and Arias), Il fervido desiderio (Bellini), and O del mio amato ben (Donaudy), and discuss some basic rules of Italian diction with Fabio Centanni, an Italian coach who accompanies Renata Scotto's Opera Studio in Rome! The texts are available from the LiederNet Archive by clicking on the titles above.   Feel free to leave comments here or you can write to me with specific questions at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 Spanish, the letters B (which can be transcribed as [b] or [β]), D ([d] or [ð]), the unvoiced TH pronunciation of C and Z [θ] and the aspirate S used in Spain. Our texts for today are the Obradors' song "Del cabello más sutil" and "Bonita rama de sauce" set by Argentinean composer Carlos Guastavino. In "Bonita rama de sauce", the word that looks like "río" on the Lied and Art Song Text Page is really just "rio", it's just a strange quirk on the page. If you are interested in hearing these songs, there are many YouTube clips of both of these songs, by many different performers, you can find them by going to YouTube and typing in the titles. For those of you who want to know more about the River Plate, here is the Wikipedia article. You can find Spike Jones' "All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" here--remember that this is totally exaggerated, I'm not saying it should really sound like this! But it's a fun way to hear someone whistle through an S and get in the holiday spirit awhile! Please feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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

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 and "Waldesgespräch", by German romantic poet Josef von Eichendorff, one of the most famous pieces from Schumann's Liederkreis Op. 39. If you are interested in Pennsylfaanich Deitsch, there is actually a Wikipedia page, both in the language and about the language. There are many different spellings and pronunciations, so it's fun to look at! Plus, tenor Kenneth Riegel commissioned a song cycle of PA Dutch poetry in 1977, entitled Songs of the Tulpehocken, from composer Stephen Douglas Burton. There is a recording of them with the Lousiville Symphony, and he also performed them in several recitals with my mother! As always, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

At least Episode 23 is up! Sorry for the delay, and for the static that you will sometimes hear on the podcast! 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 first two long passages of Kéksakállú and the first long passage of Judit. If you have downloaded this on iTunes, I added the text to the Lyrics tab under Get Info, hopefully it will go through for you. We focus on the 14 Hungarian vowels, which come in short and long pairs. The new phonetic symbol that we come across is [ɒ] for the unaccented dark "a". Here are some links for anyone interested in finding out more about Hungarian language and music: There is a 2-page article in the Journal of Singing with a short history of Hungarian music and a brief explanation of the diction. I also found Hungarian Reference, which includes sound clips of the alphabet, and a free online Hungarian course at the University of Kansas. For Hungarian music on YouTube, I found the movie The Miraculous Circumstance, which is a film about the folk song tradition that Béla Bartok was trying to preserve. Other clips that I found include a scene from György Ránki's The Emperor's New Clothes (Pomádé király uj ruhája), György Kurtág's Four Songs to poems by János Pilinszky and some clips from Erkel Ferenc's opera Bánk Bán, "Hazám, hazám" and the Gertrudis duet. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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], TY [c], NY [ɲ]  and LY [j]; and the variations of S [ʃ], ZS [ʒ], SZ [s], CS [tʃ] and C [ts]. Here is a link to the text for this week, and I also found these YouTube clips of it in performance as a solo with piano and as a duet with orchestra--there are also many other clips available including a pop/rock release of it! As always, please feel free to contact me with questions or suggestions here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 on the й (I-kratkoe), the devoicing of consonants, the hard sign ъ (not to be confused with the soft sign ь or the vowel ы!), another way to write the JE vowel - ѣ and a little on the soft consonant щ.

Since I'm a big fan of trying to read the Cyrillic, here are the links to the texts for "Я жду тебя" and "Весенние воды" in Cyrillic. If you prefer, there are links directly under the texts to get the Roman alphabet transliterations.

The two podcasts mentioned on this episode are A Taste of Russian and The Russian Sound System, both of which are available free on iTunes. I also found a nice website called Russian Language Lessons, which is free and many of the lessons have audio clips to help you learn to pronounce, it seems comparable to the Talk Now! CD-rom series of language lessons with more grammar rules.

Please feel free to contact me with questions or comments here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 patter, while conductors Henrik Nánási and Erik Nielsen talk about Bel Canto style, cadenzas and what young singers can do to prepare themselves better. We'll be back mid-January with new episodes--I already have several interviews lined up for this month, including one on Czech diction! Meanwhile, have a wonderful holiday season, stay warm and see you next year! Ellen

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 -oso), intervocalic S and using consonants to create expression. Here are links to the libretti for Così fan tutte (scroll down to Aria No. 17) and La Traviata (scroll down to the opening of Act II). Just for the sake of clarity, on this episode we translated the word "esca" as "hook", but I double-checked this with my Harpers Collins Sansoni dictionary and the definition there is "bait, enticement". The language lesson website I mention in Episode 27 is Verbal Planet. There you can set up online Skype lessons with teachers from all over the world at your convenience. Please feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with any questions or comments!

Our first episode on Czech diction! This week conductor Tomáš 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 less familiar with the Czech language, we tried to cover a lot of the basics, while concentrating on things foreigners have trouble with like the palatal D [ɟ]and T[c], the voiced H [ɦ] and the accent markings on vowels and consonants, including our favorite Czech letter ř [Ř]! You can find a libretto for the first act of Rusalka which also has an English translation here. The Song to the Moon is about halfway down and the Prince's aria is towards the end of the first act. Timothy Cheek's Singing in Czech is an excellent resource to study Czech diction. It includes a CD with native speakers pronouncing the examples in the book, as well as an extensive list of Lieder and Opera in Czech and word-for-word translations and IPA for many of the most important songs and arias. I also found a blog called Czech Mix: Opera Colorado celebrates Czech cultural arts, with some interesting entries about Czech music, Dvorak and a conversation with the Czech language coach for Opera Colorado's production of Rusalka about the challenges of singing in Czech. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 ich in deine Augen seh'" from Dichterliebe. Since German has so many of them, this week we are concentrating on consonants! Double consonants, 2 in a row, 3 in a row, with some ideas on how to practice them, as well as the genitive (possessive) S. You can find the libretto for Der Freischütz here, just scroll down to musical number 8-Szene und Arie to find Agathe's aria. The text for "Wenn ich in deine Augen seh'" can be found here. There was also a movie version of Der Freischütz released in December of 2010, hopefully this trailer is viewable all over the world and not copyright protected! Please feel free to contact me with questions or comments here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

This weeks show contains 3 arias from Die Zauberflöte: "Ach, ich fühl's" with Nadja Mchantaf; "Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön" with Oliver Ringelhahn; and "Papageno's Suicide" with Markus Marquardt. We'll be concentrating on 3 specific sounds: the letter ä, the letter r in many positions, and the German schwa. If you want to follow the text, you can find an online libretto at this Opera Guide website or if you would like to see the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (the critical edition of the full score), you can find that through the website of the Mozarteum--click Ja that you are only using this for study purposes, and then look for Die Zauberflöte under Bühnenwerke. As always, please feel free to send me any questions at ellen@ellenrissinger.com Viel Spaß!

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 Z, and the LL in Castilian Spanish. The text for "No puede ser" can be found here, as well as a brief history of Zarzuela and a short biography of the composer, Pablo Sorozábal. The text to "Al amor" can be found at the Lied and Art Song Texts Page, and I found the original Catullus poem that it's based on, as well as a blog in Spanish that compares the two poems, and includes another modern translation of the Latin. The Basque language (Euskera) pre-dates Indo-European languages, and is considered a language isolate, since it has no grammatic connection to the languages that surround it. The Basque composer Vanessa mentioned were Jesús Guridi and Aita Donostia, and I found a few Youtube clips for both of them: the Finale of El Caserio and the song Alla arriba en equella montana by Guridi and choral pieces Adios Ene Maitea for men's choir and Agur Maria for women's choir by Donostia. As always, please feel free to contact me with and questions or comments here, on the Facebook page, or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 use glottals in Italian (spoiler-the answer is NO!), some irregular verbs you may run across, some standard suffixes with stressed E and the importance of knowing every meaning of your lines in an opera. You can find both texts for today at the Lied and Art Song Texts Page. "O del mio dolce ardor" is from the opera Paride ed Elena, a collaboration of Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi, who also wrote the libretto for Orfeo ed Euridice. Francesco Petrarca's "Pace non trovo" is one of his sonnets to Laura, the married woman whom he loved--Wikipedia even has an entire section devoted to Petrarch and Laura. I also found a short essay on Liszt and Petrarch at a website entitled The Engines of our Ingenuity. The Lied and Art Song Texts Page lists "Pace non trovo" as Sonnet CXXXIV, but every other source that I found lists it in modern numerals as 104, so I've used that number on this episode. For people interested in reading some of the classic literature online, check out Project Gutenberg, Classic Authors dot Net or The Literature Page. Kindle for PC or MAC is also available as a free download from Amazon, if you would like books in that format but don't have a Kindle (I personally have this on my Netbook, so that I can carry it around with me). Anyone interested in studying more mythology can get started at Wikipedia's Roman Mythology and Greek Mythology pages, as well as Encyclopedia Mythica, Myth Web and Theoi Greek Mythology or check out Edith Hamilton's book Mythology. As always, please feel free to contact me here, through the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with any questions or comments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

This week we work through Gretchen am Spinnrade with Netta Or and Die Post with Markus Marquardt, and then discuss German Diction in a more general way with coach Hans Sotin. We talk a little more about open and closed U and Ü and devoicing consonants. If you need the texts, follow the link to the Lied and Art Song Text Page at the right. Feel free to leave comments here, at the Facebook page, or you can send me specific questions at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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

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

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, with two songs from Sibelius' Opus 36, No. 4 "Säf, säf, susa" and No.1 "Svarta rosor". The new phonetic letters that we introduce this week are for the letter U [ʉː] & [ɵ] and for the soft K sound [ɕ]. "Säf, säf, susa" is a poem by Gustav Fröding, "Svarta rosor" by Ernst Josephson, a Swedish portrait painter. Composer Jean Sibeluis was Finnish, but most of his songs are to Swedish texts, not surprising since both Finnish and Swedish are equally the official languages of Finnland. Wikipedia has a page on Swedish pronunciation, which I used to help prepare for the interview. The alphabet and writing systems website that I mentioned on this episode is Omniglot, a great resource for all languages which includes tips on learning languages, useful phrases and tongue twisters! They also have a pronunciation page for each language (including Swedish) which includes a phonetic guide. Some of the YouTube clips I found for these songs include: "Säf, säf, susa" with Jussi Björling (and uncredited orchestra?), Birgit Nilsson with the Vienna Opera Orchestra and Håkan Hagegård with Warren Jones on the piano. "Svarta rosor" with Jüssi Björling (again an uncredited pianist!) and a recording from 1902 of Björling's teacher John Forsell with pianist Armas Järnefelt (a contemporary of Sibelius, who studied at the music institute in Helsinki with him). There are many more, these are just a few to get you started! As always, feel free to contact me with questions or comments here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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]; GN [ŋn]; NG [ŋ] and NK [ŋk]; KJ and TJ as well as the soft K [ɕ]; SJ, SKJ, STJ and SK before soft vowels [ɧ]; and the R combinations RD [ɖ], RG [rj], RL [l], RN [ɳ], RS [ʂ] and RT [ʈ]. Our text for today, Fågellek, is by Finnish author Karl August  Tavaststjerna, considered the first modern Swedish writer in Finnland. If this link works, I found a Swedish site that Google translated here. There are no free online recordings, but some that are available for purchase are Essential Highlights of Karita Mattila and Kim Borg Sings Sibelius Songs (which also has both songs from Episode 42 as well!). The preview clip I found is available at Passionato Classical Music Archives as well. I also found a cute YouTube called Simple Swedish which is good for a laugh, and a website to learn called Learning Swedish Online that offers the first 7 lessons as a free download. Feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 week it's Bartolo's aria, "La Vendetta", focusing on some standard verb endings with stressed E, some consonants that are automatically doubled between two vowels and the assimilation of N before certain consonants. The new phonetic letter we talk about is the labio dental [ɱ]. The Opera Guide has a libretto for Le Nozze di Figaro. You'll have to click on Libretto and the letter I (for Italian!), then scroll down to Aria No. 4. The history resources I mentioned on this episode are the classes "History 5: European Civilization from the Renaissance to the Present" from UC Berkeley on iTunes University (there are several years to choose from) and the podcast The History of Rome, hosted by Mike Duncan (also available free on iTunes). Feel free to contact me with any comments, questions or suggestions here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

In the second half of my interview with Simone di Felice, we concentrate on 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 triphthongs, a few more verb forms and non-aspirated K, P and T. The Opera Guide has a libretto for Le Nozze di Figaro. You'll have to click on Libretto and the letter I (for Italian!), then scroll down to Aria No. 18, in Act 3. The book that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode is Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin. My personal favorite Italian Diction books, which I discussed last week and this, are Evalina Colorni's Singer's Italian: A Manual of Diction and Phonetics and David Adams' A Handbook of Diction for Singers (which also covers French and German--and he was my diction teacher at Cincinnati!). Plus, the useful practice tip I menioned at the end of the episode is thanks to my first diction teacher, Larry Marietta! I'll try to get next week's episode out on time, but we're in technical rehearsals for Alcina right now, so I can make no promises. I'll keep updating the Facebook page with my progress. In the meantime, feel free to contact me with any comments, questions or suggestions here, on the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 that we've talked about before, like the NG sound [ŋ], the unpronounced intervocalic H and some diphthongs. Our texts for this episode are "O Isis und Osiris" from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (I did not link this to the Opera Guide website because there are several typos there), and "In dem Schatten meiner Locken" from Wolf's Spanisches Liederbuch. I dug through many YouTube clips in researching this episode, so I wanted to include them here. For "O Isis und Osiris" I found Rene Pape (who lives in Dresden and drops in on performances sometimes!), Kurt Moll, Gottlieb Frick and Hans-Peter König (an old colleague of mine from Düsseldorf who sings all over the world, especially the Wagner repertoire). For "In dem Schatten meiner Locken" Elisabeth Grümmer with Hertha Klust uses all of the glottals we talked about, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf has two posted clips, one with Gerald Moore and one with Wilhelm Furtwängler where she uses considerably more glottals than the other performance, and I also found a clip of Lotte Lehmann (with unknown pianist) who doesn't seem to use glottals at all. I also specifically looked for Fischer-Dieskau using glottals and found several examples--the most obvious were in Erlkönig when he says "den Erlkönig" and in "Die Forelle" when he says "Doch endlich". Enjoy this little study on glottals! I'll be in the States giving some master classes for the next few weeks, so the podcast will be back up mid-November for a few episodes before the holidays, but in the meantime, please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.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 and closed E and O in every position. Opernführer has the libretto for Le nozze di Figaro (remember to click on libretto and then I for Italian!). For "Dove sono", scroll down to Recit and Aria No. 20 in the third act, and "Se vuol ballare" starts with the recit just before Cavatina No. 3 close to the beginning. Here is the Wikipedia article on Italian language, in case you want to read a little about the acute accent (´) and the circumflex accent (^) in Italian, just click on Writing System in the Contents box and it will take you there immediately. The other resources I mentioned in this episode are the Jillians Michaels podcast, The Collaborative Piano Blog (a must-read for coaches and very useful for everyone!), the book Talent is Overrated and a website devoted to learning better study habits called Study Hacks. Much of the research on the habits of elite performers refer to a study done with the students at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. Happy Thanksgiving! Ellen

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 professional 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. The way this blog is set up, I can only attach one file to every blog posting, so for a pdf file of the exercises (which Silke drew by hand!) look for the blog entry entitle Special Edition Download. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for me, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

    NB-The long-awaited Tongue Exercises Video can now be found at The Diction Police: Special Diction Unit! Come check it out!

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. Be sure to listen to Episode 48 first and get a handle on those exercises before trying these! Then for a treat, Silke shows us a few German tongue twisters to get things really moving:

1. Zehn zahme Ziegen zogen zehn Zentner Zucker zum Zoo.
2. Zwischen zwei Zwetschgenzweigen saßen zwei zwitschernde Schwalben.
3. Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische. Frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz.
4. Blaukraut bleibt Blaukraut und Brautkleid bleibt Brautkleid.

You can find these (with some slight variations in text) and more German tongue twisters at the Wikipedia page entitled Zungenbrecher. Along the left side of that page, you can also find fun tongue twisters in many other languages, and they seem to have even more at the actual entry for Tongue Twisters, so once you've mastered these you can move on to Italian, Spanish, etc! Look for the pdf drawings of the tongue exercises in a separate blog entry entitled Special Edition Download. And keep your eyes on the Facebook page--Silke and I are planning to create a YouTube video so you can actually see these tongue exercises in action rather than just listening! I'll let you know when we get that posted. Since we are headed into crunch time at the opera house and most people are in finals weeks, on university break or dealing with a heavy schedule of holiday concerts, The Diction Police will be back mid-January with all-new episodes. Please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with questions, comments or suggestions. Have a wonderful and blessed holiday season! See you in 2012 :-)

  NB-The long-awaited Tongue Exercises Video can now be found at The Diction Police: Special Diction Unit! Come check it out!

In Episode 5 we talk with Nathalie de Montmollin about French Diction in 2 Fauré songs, Mai and Aprés un rêve. We specifically talk about the letters E and I, mute E, the nasal vowels, and some rules about obligatory, forbidden and optional liaison. You'll see this is a longer episode--I've also included an interview with Philip Shepard, author of What the Fach?!, on working in opera in the German-speaking countries and in the US for both singers and coaches, and there was so much useful information that I hope you will forgive me for going well over the half-hour time limit!  You can find the texts the LiederNet Archive by clicking on the song titles. For more information about the French liaison, I found a website with a complete list of liaison rules in French here. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or email me at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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. If you haven't already heard Georg Zeppenfeld sing this role (because I posted it on the Facebook page several weeks ago), here is the YouTube link to the Bayreuth performance last summer--Mein Herr und Gott starts at 5:26. The entire production was broadcast on TV here in Europe, and it's posted on YouTube in it's entirety. There's also a little opera karaoke link, in case you would like to sing this aria yourself! I found some YouTube clips with 2 singers who connect Kennst du (Birgit Nilsson with John Wustman, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with Gerald Moore), as well as some who separate Kennst/du (Christa Ludwig with Erik Werba, Juliane Banse with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin). The blog Study Hacks has a few postings on Multitasking. There is also an article called The Myth of Multitasking at The New Atlantis. The Diction Police is now on Twitter! Look for me at @dictionpolice. As always, please feel free to leave comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, now on Twitter :-) or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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. Goethe's "Anakreons Grab" refers to the ancient Greek poet, Anacreon--I also found a nice blog post entitled "What I like about this song". Klaus Groth's poem "Wie Melodien zieht es mir" is most famously set by Brahms (in fact, it's the opening music for the podcast!), but Charles Ives also set this poem, as well as 17 other German poems, several of which have been recorded by Thomas Hampson. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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. Grieg's Opus 60 is a set of 5 songs to texts by Krag and is available on IMSLP along with links to purchase a copy. I found one YouTube of Birgit Nilsson singing this song, and it can also be found on iTunes on the recordings Edvard Grieg Complete Songs Vol 1 with various artists, Grieg: Complete Songs Vol. 2 with Monica Groop and Ilmo Ranta (the entire Opus 60) as well as Grieg: Songs and Lieder with Anne Sofie von Otter and Bengt Forsberg (just "Mens jeg venter"). Most of the information that I gathered in preparing for this episode came from Wikipedia's Norwegian Phonology page as well as Omniglot. The phonetic letters are mostly standard, except for the barred U [ʉ]. Otherwise, we find

• a [ɑ]
• å [ɔ]
• æ [æ]
• e [ɛ, ə] according to the websites, there is also a closed [e], but not as closed as the German sound
• i [i, I]
• o [u, o]
• ø [ø]
• u [ʉ]
• y [y]

Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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] (which I want to research more!). "Sang til juletræet" is a Christmas song, with a text by Johan Krohn. The text was also published set to a folk melody in the Norwegian First  Reading Book for Elementary School back in 1892. "En svane" is a poem by Henrik Ibsen, one of the founders of modernism in theater. There are many recordings of En svane--on YouTube, I found Håkan Hagegård and Warren Jones and a live performance of Jussi Björling with Frederick Schauwecker along with many others. As always, please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter (@dictionpolice) or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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. "Oblak a mrákota jest vůkol něho" is the first song in Dvořak's Biblické Písně (Biblical Songs), taken from the Book of Psalms of the Kralice Bible, which is the Czech equivalent to the English King James Bible or the German Luther Bible. This text can also be found in Timothy Cheek's Singing in Czech, with a translation and the IPA. The tongue twisters that we talked about at the end are:

• Třista třicet tři stříbrných stříkaček stříkalo přes třista třicet tři stříbrných střech.
• Strč prst skrz krk.

Have fun with them :-) Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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. "Letí, straka letí" is No. 19 in Leoš Janáček's song cycle Zápisník zmizelého (The Diary of One Who Vanished). The texts were all published anonymously in the Brno newspaper 1916 and the poet remained unknown until 1998. I also mentioned a blog posting with links to an article about how posture affects the human endocrine system and the Alexander Technique (body learning). As always, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with any comments, questions or suggestions!

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. Both of our poets today were members of the Swedish Academy at the same time. "Längtan heter min arvedel" is by Erik Axel Karlfeldt, who was also a member of the Nobel Committee and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature posthumously in 1931. "I drömmen du är mig nära" was written by Tor Hedberg (Wikipedia doesn't have this article in English!) and set to music by Emil Sjögren. On the episode, I refer often to Anna Hersey's terrific article in the NATS Journal of Singing (Jan/Feb 2012 edition) "An Introduction to Swedish Diction." If you aren't a subscriber to the Journal, the online link to the article shows up incomplete and with phonetic letters defaulting to regular letters, so if you are really interested in this topic it's important to get a copy of the actual article. Back copies of the Journal of Singing are also available for purchase. A big thank you to Anna Hersey for letting me know about her article, and to the people who have recently written about their own diction books and dissertations! I'm always thrilled to have new resources and as I wade through all this material, I'll keep everyone posted on what I find! Please contact me with questions, comments and suggestions (or new diction resources! :-) ) here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

The Diction Police is now officially in its third year! Thank you so much to all listeners around the world--the audience has more than doubled in its second year, and I'd love to say that again next year, so I'm asking everyone to please spread the word: share on Facebook, post and write comments on the Facebook page, tweet on Twitter, send the link to your singer/coach friends and post comments on iTunes so that more people can find The Diction Police and benefit from it! Thank you! This week and next our topic will be English Diction, concentrating on the differences between American Standard English (AS) and British Received Pronunciation (RP). Canadian baritone and diction specialist Jason Nedecky is with us to discuss the Thomas Hardy poem "Before Life and After", focusing on the initial WH whine/wine rule [w] vs. [ʍ], the prefixes RE-, PRE- and BE- and the vowel shifts that occur between AS and RP English, including when [æ] becomes [ɑ], when [ɑ] or [ʌ] become the upside down dark A [ɒ] and when the American dark A [ɑ] becomes open O [ɔ] in RP. "Before Life and After" is the final song in Benjamin Britten's song cycle Winter Words, a set of 8 Thomas Hardy poems. Hardy was a Victorian Realist author, probably most famous for his novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but he also wrote 947 poems--all of his works are available online at the Thomas Hardy Society. Jason was kind enough to allow me to post a worksheet that he uses in his course, entitled "English Diction: Pronunciation Shifts in Singing", which is posted in this blog entry. The dictionary that we mention is Longman Pronunciation Dictionary--from what I could tell online, it seems that the 2nd edition has phonetics but the 3rd edition has transcriptions. I've ordered the second edition, but if anyone has access to the 3rd edition, please report back as to its usefulness! And of course, we mention Madeleine Marshall's The Singer's Manual of English Diction. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, on the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com UPDATE: Jason has assured me that the 3rd edition of the Longman has phonetics!

We're sticking with English Diction and Jason Nedecky this week, discussing the text to "Music for a While". Our focus is on how to handle R's ([ʀ], [r], [ɾ] and the burred R [ɹ]), a little bit about glottals, a review of some of the topics from last week and voiced consonants at the ends of words. I also gave some tips on studying foreign languages, which I'll add to the 7 Steps to Learn Music page. Henry Purcell's "Music for a While" was written as incidental music to John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee's tragic play Oedipus. There are several different realizations of the continuo, including one by Benjamin Britten. Britten realized many of Purcell's songs, which have been recorded on Hyperion. Jason also included a worksheet on R's that is available in this post. He also introduces the concept of rhoticity on this episode! In the meantime, please free feel to contact me here, on the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com with any comments, questions or suggestions! NB--Just to be sure, in reading the text be careful that the word "wond'ring" doesn't come out sounding like "wand'ring". The first syllable of this word should be phoneticized [wʌn-], NOT [wɒn-].

Russian Diction is back this week--Katja Sapega Klein discusses the texts to Olga's Aria from Евгений Онегин (Yevgeniy Onegin) and Tchaikovsky's "Нам звёзды кроткие сияли", the last song of his Opus 60. Our focus this time is on what happens when 2 vowels come together in Russian, the devoicing (or not!) of consonants and double soft consonant/vowel combinations. Olga's aria, "Ах, Таня, Таня! Всегда мечтаешь ты... Я не способна к грусти томной" can be found through an online libretto for Евгений Онегин, just scroll down to "page 16". If you want to check your homework after you've translated this aria :-) try Google translate--it does a pretty good job at quick translations from/to almost any language we would ever need and will even allow for alternate translations if you highlight a specific word. "Нам звёзды кроткие сияли" ("Nam zvjozdy krotkije sijali") is a text by Aleksey Pleshcheyev, a radical 19th Century Russian poet who was imprisoned and exiled. Be sure to look on the 7 Steps to Learn  Music/Language Learning Tips page for this week's tips on studying foreign languages. The podcasts that I mention at the beginning of this episode are also listed on the Resources page. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, through the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

This week we discuss the texts to Orlovsky's Aria from Die Fledermaus and "Morgens steh' ich auf und frage" (from Schumann's Liederkreis op. 24) with Stephanie Atanasov and Markus Marquardt. We also talk about diphthongs and the pronunciation of the letter S before T and P with coach Markus Henn.  There is an online libretto for Die Fledermaus at the Opera Guide here, just scroll down to No. 7 Couplet for Orlovsky's Aria, and the text for "Morgens steh' ich auf und frage" can be found from the LiederNet Archive 

Since I just spent the weekend preparing for an upcoming Lieder recital with Mirko Roschkowski, of course I couldn't let him off the hook without talking some German Diction with us! This week's texts are two Schubert songs with mythological characters "Ganymed" (poem by Goethe) and "Der Atlas" (poem by Heinrich Heine). We concentrate on when NG is phonetically [ng] and not [ŋ], the prefixes UN- and AN- and review a few favorite topics like closed and open E's, glottals and the unvoiced genitive S. Ganymede was the cup-bearer to the Gods, and maybe a lot more. There are many different opinions on the story behind this mortal-turned-deity, including these links from Theoi dot com, this commentary by Oxford  University Press and a German analysis of the Geothe poetry. Atlas was a second-generation Titan whose punishment for taking part in the Titan's war against the Olympian gods was having to support the heavens on his shoulders to keep the sky from crashing into the earth. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter (@dictionpolice) or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

It's the time of year when opera seasons and school years start, so it's time for The Diction Police to get back on track, too! This week and next our topic is English Diction with British baritone Simon Neal, who is here in Dresden singing in Henze's opera We Come To The River. Our text for today is A. E. Housman's "Loveliest of Trees" and we concentrate on the multiple phonetic functions of the letter O in English, final Y in words like "twenty" and "fifty" and a little bit about legato singing and consonants. A. E. Housman was Professor of Latin at Cambridge famous for his studies and research in his field, but he was also a poet most famous to us for his book of poetry A Shropshire Lad from which we get "Loveliest of Trees". After being turned down by several publishers, he published it himself, and it has become a favorite source of texts for many composers, so you'll find many settings of "Loveliest of Trees": the Butterworth that Simon mentions I found on YouTube with John Shirley-Quirk and Martin Isepp plus many student performances of the John Duke version (which is the one I have in my ears, not Celius Dougherty as I thought!). For anyone who needs the visual since I didn't talk about what the letters look like, the phonetic letters that come up on this episode are:

• [ʌ] the stressed version of the English schwa--called an upside down V, but was originally an A without the crossbar
• [ə] a regular schwa, which in English is related to an A sound
• [ɑ] dark A (but I want you to sing them bright [a] !)
• [ɒ] the upside down dark A--this occurs in British English, not in American. For a refresher on this, check out Episode 57 and Jason Nedecky's worksheet on pronunciation shifts between British Received Pronunciation and American Standard specifically under "short O"
• [ɪ] open I
• [o] closed O, which is not as closed and round as German or French
• [ʊ] open U (which I keep calling the "cookie" vowel)
• [u] closed U, which is not as closed and round as German or French

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or you can email me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

Simon Neal is back with us this week discussing the text "The Vagabond". We go through the text, focusing on the problem with Ls and Rs in English, dealing with pianissimi and why we should sing pure Italianate vowels in every language. I'll also talk about a phonetic concept for unstressed I (between the closed [i] and open [I] sounds) that Jan & Catherine McDaniel (English diction teachers at the Bass School of Music, Oklahoma City University) sent me, the SCHWI. "The Vagabond" is the first poem in Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs of Travel, and the first song in Ralph Vaughan Williams' song cycle of the same name. I found some interesting youtube clips of this song, Thomas Allen with Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and a very early recording of Peter Dawson in 1923 (pianist isn't listed), with lots of rrrrrolled Rs. The Bryn Terfel CD is also quite good but I couldn't find a youtube with that version. The previous entries that I talk about are Episodes 48 and 49 for tongue exercises, and Jason Nedecky's Treatment of R and Pronunciation Shifts for the HAND and ASK words. Please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook Page, on Twitter @dictionpolice or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

This week we focus on 16th Century French with specialist Olivier Bettens. Our text is "Mignonne allons voir si la rose" by Pierre de Ronsard, and we discuss the differences between 16th Century and Modern French pronunciation and spelling.  I had some problems with a previous posting of this, so I'm hoping that this new post will work--fingers crossed! Pierre de Ronsard was a very famous and prolific poet in 16th Century France, one of a group of 7 poets, called the Pleiades, dedicated to bringing French literature of the time up to classical standards. During the podcast I said that the Pleiades brings us back to mythology, because the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. All the websites I found with the text had modernized versions of it, so I'm uploading a pdf of the original plate that Olivier and I were looking at (I can't seem to attach two files to one post, so it will be in a separate post). The Long S, which looks like a lower-case "f" without a crossbar, was maintained in many languaged for centuries; it is even at the top of the American Declaration of Independence as well as in most German books up until the past century. There are many websites with lyrics and music of this song with different spellings: The Lied, Art Song and Choral Text Archive; Costeley's setting of this for chorus; Richard Wagner's setting for solo voice and piano; and a French Wikipedia article with the text. Olivier Bettens' website "Chantez-vous francais?" is a phenomenal reference source for Medieval and Baroque French Diction. It's mostly in French, bet several sections are also translated into English. He also recommended the website Prononciation, with a bibliography of reference materials from the 1500s through to today, all on the topic of French Diction throughout the ages. This episode came about because of a question from a listener, so please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com  I do my best to honor them as quickly as I can!

Olivier Bettens takes us through the pronunciation of French in the 17th Century with a scene from Armide. We talk about some exceptional words that are the same in modern pronunciation, alexandrines, the imperfect verb tense and a fifth nasal vowel. We got through as many rules as we could in the past 2 episodes, but there is a lot of information on this subject, so to find out more, check out Olivier's website, Chantez-vous francais? Armide was written by dramatist/librettist Philippe Quinault and composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Lully is considered the founder of French opera, even though he was born in Florence, Italy, and only moved to France when he was 14! Quinault was a playwrite, but in 1671 he contributed to a libretto that Lully set and from that point on only wrote libretti for Lully's works. The text for this episode is in a separate post. I'm leaving for the States tomorrow for a week, but I'll be back next Sunday and will post another episode shortly thereafter! In the meantime, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com NB: In this episode, I pronounced Lully's name incorrectly--the "p" in Jean-Baptiste should have been silent! I'll correct it for future downloads, but for people who downloaded it previously, make sure to take note and not follow my mistake. Many thanks to Jason Nedecky for noticing!

Today's episode is in response to a request from the Facebook page, specifically for young coaches! Conductor Erik Nielsen, and singers Simon Neal, John Packard and Nadja Mchantaf talk about what they are looking for from a rehearsal pianist or a vocal coach and I share my experiences as a coach, including a few of my tricks and advice on practicing for auditions. The audition repertoire for coaches that I mentioned:

• Mozart--Le nozze di Figaro 2nd Act Finale; Così fan tutte 1st Act Finale
• French--Carmen Smugglers Quintet
• Strauss--Elektra opening through the Magd Scene; Der Rosenkavalier opening (including Wie du warst); Salome Jews Quintet
• Chorus Scenes--La Bohème 2nd Act; Otello opening; Falstaff Fugue

If anyone has other repertoire that they have found useful, please feel free to post them in the comments section! One thing I didn't mention in the episode is Wolf Trap Opera's Aria Frequency List--they list the arias that were performed with the number of times they heard them. So if you're looking to prepare yourself to accompany audition season in New York City, start learning those arias :-) I'm moving in a few days and not sure when my new DSL will be hooked up, but I'll be working on new episodes in the meantime so that once it's installed we can get back on track! Please feel free to contact me with requests, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

As a belated Valentine's present, The Diction Police is back with all new episodes for 2013! Miss Kitty Fantastico and I are all settled in our new apartment and I have quite a few episodes already recorded, so we should be able to stay on track for this spring! This week and next we'll be talking about some arias from Händel's Messiah. On this episode, tenor Charles Reid goes through the text of "Comfort Ye... Ev'ry Valley", and then we discuss some of the problematic traditional misuse of diction with Jan and Catherine McDaniel, from the faculty of the Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University, focusing on the words COMFORT and SAITH (plus other words that tend to be mispronounced), rolling Rs in the combination CR and GR, the pronunciation of the letter X and a whole lot about schwas. The score for Händel's Messiah can be found as a free download at Petrucci Music Library (IMSLP) and you can find the libretto here ("Comfort Ye... Ev'ry Valley" begins the Messiah). We talk about the word COMFORT quite a bit on this episode and I promised to post YouTubes--I found one with Jerry Hadley singing, this one where tenor Howard Crook sings COMFORT correctly at least once :-) and a very interesting BBC TV show about Comfort Ye with Trevor Pinnock discussing it, Kurt Streit singing. There are, of course, a ton of YouTubes of this recit and aria, have fun listening to them and comparing the diction to what we talk about in the episode! Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.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]). The libretto for the Messiah can be found here (the recitatives are Nos. 14a, 14b, 15 and 16, "Rejoice Greatly" is No. 18) and the score is available as a free download from the Petrucci Music Library. We talk quite a bit about Madeleine Marshall's book The Singer's Manual of English Diction, which is still one of the most important reference materials for English Diction. If you want a brush-up on the vowel shifts between American Standard and British Received Pronunciation, check out Jason Nedecky's worksheet and for more discussion of the  diphthongs in English, check out Episode 17. I left one completely mispronounced word in there, just for fun, and Miss Kitty Fantastico makes a quick cameo at the beginning that I couldn't help leaving in :-) If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com NB: I found some new information that I needed to add into this episode, so I redid the episode, in case people are wondering why it's suddenly slightly longer. The word SHONE in British RP should be [ʃɒn] rather than the diphthong [ʃoʊn] that it would be in American Standard. The word SHOWN remains a diphthong in both British RP and American Standard.

After an unexpected extended delay due to a climbing accident and travelling over Easter, we're back! 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]. Here is a libretto for Verdi's Macbeth--for Banco's aria scroll down to Nr. 8 1/2 Scena Banco. Sometimes the Opera Guide link will revert to the German text, or even to the Synopsis page, so make sure to click on Libretto and then I for Italian. The resources I talked about on this episode were the Dizionario d'ortografia e di pronunzia from RAI (the Italian television station) and the Wikipedia entry for standard suffix endings in Italian, including lists of words ending in -MENTO and -MENTE. The iPad apps that I now use for translation and diction purposes are the Harpers Collins Italian-English Dictionary and lo Zingarelli Italian Dictionary (which also gives open and closed Es and Os for all verb forms!). Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.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! You can find a libretto for Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Opernführer. Scroll down to Aria No.8 (remember to make sure it's on L for libretto and I for Italian!). The fabulous website resources that I mentioned in this episode are: Technology for the Classical Singer, a must-have resource for all of us, with blog postings on everything from foreign language dictionaries to the free treatises on singing at IMSLP to where to find accompaniment tracks. She also has amazing video tutorials to teach us all how to get the most out of our technology! SingersBabel, a diction website with video clips that allow you to see the text and IPA transcription while you listen! Focusing on French, German and English repertoire right now, it has a large selection of pieces to choose from, including Bach Cantatas and choral repertoire! And don't forget to have a good chuckle over Bugs Bunny's classic Rabbit of Seville :-) As always, please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

This week we work through 2 arias from Il barbiere di Siviglia--"La calunnia" and "Una voce poco fa". Our guest is Andrea Sanguineti, an Italian coach/conductor with the Staatsoper Hannover, and we talk about the letters C and G in Italian and some standard suffixes with stressed E and O. There is an online libretto for Il barbiere di Siviglia here, just click under Act 1, Scene 5 Cavatina for Una voce poco fa, or Act 1, Scene 8 Aria for La calunnia. If you are interested in the podcast "Audio storie, fiabe e favole per bambini", you'll find the link here.  Please feel free to leave comments here, on the Facebook page, or to contact me directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.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. Κόρες της Αττικής was set to music by Theodoros Karyotakis (I could only find this in German on Wikipedia), a student of Dmitri Mitropoulos. The text to this song can be found on page 49 of Lydia Zervanos' Greek Diction Guide for Singers, from a Presidential Scholars Project she put together several years ago. She has since tweaked some of the transcriptions for errors, but the rules to Greek diction in the first half of the project are invaluable. As I promised, here is the Greek alphabet, along with an Americanized form of their names plus the options for their pronunciation (not including the digraphs that we'll talk about on the next episode):

• Α α - alpha [a]
• Β β - vita [v]
• Γ γ - gamma [γ] [ʝ]
• Δ δ - delta [ð]
• Ε ε - epsilon [ε]
• Ζ ζ - zita [z]
• Η η - ita [i]
• Θ θ - thita [θ]
• Ι ι - iota [i] [j] [ç]
• Κ κ - kappa [k] [c]
• Λ λ - lambda [l] [λ]
• Μ μ - mi [m]
• Ν ν - ni [n]
• Ξ ξ - ksi [ks]
• Ο ο - omikron [ɔ]
• Π π - pi [p]
• Ρ ρ - rho [r]
• Σ σ ς - sigma [s] [z]
• Τ τ - tau [t]
• Υ υ - ipsilon [i] [v] [f]
• Φ φ - fi [f]
• Χ χ - xi [x] [ç]
• Ψ ψ - psi [ps]
• Ω ω - omega [ɔ]

Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, on the Facebook page (and now you can even "like" each separate episode here on the blog!), on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.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 ¨ . Κάτω στον Άγιο Σίδερο is probably recognized better as "La-bas, vers l'église", from Ravel's Five Greek Songs. Ο Ναός was composed by Μανώλης Καλομοίρης (the founder of the Greek National School of Music) to a text by Κωστής Παλαμάς (a Greek poet in the late 1880s who wrote the words to the Olympic Hymn). The other resources that I mentioned in the episode were:

• Learning Greek Podcasts by the Hellenic American Union--a podcast where you can practice listening and learn quite a few useful colloquial phrases in Modern Greek
• Επικοινωνήστε ελληνικά--all in Modern Greek, this is a great book to learn the language from, since you don't have to keep flipping between the Greek alphabet and the Latin one as you're learning; there are 3 main books and 2 workbooks to go along with each of them
• Minos--try this on Spotify! Type in Minos in the Spotify search and under the albums you should get a few listings for Greek Pop music. It's a great way to hear the sounds of the language!

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger

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! We've been working together at the International Performing Arts Institute for the past few summers. Don't forget that there are already two episodes with tongue exercises as well, Episode 48 and Episode 49! Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.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 exceptional words with long, closed vowels followed by two consonants.

Originally attributed to H. Voss, it appears that Mendelssohn himself wrote the text as well as the music to "Frage". This song also became the basis for his string quartet in a-minor, Op. 13.

Please note that Lydía Zervanos has allowed us the use of some of her texts with IPA and translation for Episode 71 on Greek diction, feel free to download them!

As always, please feel free to contact me here, through the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com (I'm trying something here, not sure if this link will work... if not, please cut and paste into your email program!)

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. The text Wenn sich zwei Herzen scheiden was written by Emanuel von Geibel, a 19th century poet who was part of a linguistic society in Munich called Die Krokodile (the Crocodile Society). This text has been set by Mendelssohn and a plethora of other composers. For the exercise text, see Dr. Nebert's article "Das einzigartige -IG" and scroll down to page 10 under "Übungstext". The resources and summer programs I talked about in the episode are:

• Dr. Nebert's Sprechatelier--based in Halle, Germany, they have classes in every kind of public speaking in German, from diction lessons to media related speaking to debate and rhetoric, from Hochdeutsch through to every dialect. Dr. Nebert also studied singing as well as speech science. Special thanks to Dr. Nebert for recording his Übungstext for us!
• University of Miami Frost School of Music's summer program in Salzburg, Austria--a 5-week program for young singers and pianists, with many opportunities to take advantage of being in Salzburg during the summer Opera Festival (Festspiel)
• IPAI (The International Performing Arts Institute)--in Kiefersfelden, Germany (near Munich, on the Austrian border), a 3-week program for young singers and pianists with divisions for Classical/Opera and Musical Theater
• IMFA (The International Music Festival of the Adriatic)--in Duino, Italy (near Trieste), a 3-week program for young singers and pianists as well as composers and string players, which makes for a very interesting possibility of vocal chamber music and modern music
• AIMS (American Institute of Musical Studies)--in Graz, Austria, a 6-week program that has been around for over 40 years, for singers and pianists, plus an orchestral program to create their own festival orchestra

Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments or suggestions here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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]. The libretto for Carmen can be found at the Opera Guide. Make sure to click on L for libretto and F for French (because it seems to default back every time, and in that order, because it will keep reverting!) and then scroll down to No.17 Duo--the aria is just a little beyond that indication. The diction book I mentioned in this episode is the second edition of Jason Nedecky's French Diction for Singers: A Handbook of Pronunciation for French Opera and Mélodie, available from the University of Toronto bookstore. It's a great resource, which includes a list of common spellings and their pronunciations as well as over 7,000 proper names with their phonetic transcriptions! The YouTube that I promised to post is this one, of Gérard Souzay singing "Clair de lune" with Jacqueline Bonneau on the piano. Please feel free to comment below, I would love everyone's opinion as to whether or not you think he is singing "les" open or closed (there are a whole bunch of "les" starting at about 1:55) :-) With questions, comments or suggestions, you can get in touch with me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

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 experts
• IPA transcriptions with word-for-word and poetic translations of texts from Art Song, opera and oratorio
• Translations into English, French and German
• Diction Tips
• Skype 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 ellen@ellenrissinger.com

This week's episode is from The Diction Police's Special Diction Unit! This is the audio version of the SDU Video Tutorial, for people who want to listen while they are out and about.

Simone di Felice leads us through the text to Conti's Il mio bel foco... Quella fiamma che m'accende, with readings at normal and slow speeds, as well as our usual Diction Police-style interview and wrap-up. The full IPA transcript, with poetic and word-for-word translations is available (in English, French, and German) for individual sale here! For the video version of this episode, click here. Also, don't forget that François Germain is at the Classical Singer convention in Boston right now--stop by The Diction Police table to say hello or to sign up to sing at his master class tomorrow (May 28, 2016) at 11am. With comments or questions, please feel free to contact us here, at the Facebook page or directly at info@dictionpolice.com

This week's episode is from The Diction Police's Special Diction Unit! This is the audio version of the SDU video tutorial, for people who want to listen while they are out and about.

François Germain leads us through the text to "Avant de quitter", Valentin's aria from Gounod's Faust, with readings at normal and slow speeds, as well as our usual Diction Police-style interview and wrap-up. The full IPA transcript, with poetic and word-for-word translation is available for individual sale here. For the full video tutorial, click here. Also, don't forget The Diction Police: By the Book webinar series on French Diction continues today (June 11), Wednesday (June 15) and Saturday (June 18) at 11am EDT on Google+ Hangouts--see the FB page for details. We hope you can join us live! The Webinar videos will also be available on our YouTube channel--watch Episode 1 in the series now! With comments or questions, please feel free to contact us here, at the Facebook page or directly at info@dictionpolice.com

This week's episode is from The Diction Police's Special Diction Unit! This is the audio version of the SDU Video Tutorial, for people who want to listen on-the-go.

Mirko Roschkowski leads us through the text to "Morgengruß" from Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, with readings at normal and slow speeds, as well as our usual Diction Police-style interview and wrap-up. The full IPA transcript, with poetic and word-for-word translation is available for individual sale here. For the full video tutorial of this episode, click here. This will be our last episode before the summer break--we'll be back with all new episodes on Saturday, August 20, 2016. In the meantime, if you missed our Webinar series (The Diction Police: By the Book) on French Lyric Diction, you can watch all 4 episodes on our YouTube channel! Or be sure to like us on Facebook for weekly Diction Lessons and Tongue Twisters for Singers! With comments or questions, please feel free to contact us here, at the Facebook page or directly at info@dictionpolice.com

"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 Us, and show you a few words with ß that crop up in many Lieder. The texts for these songs can be found at The LiederNet Archive. Auch kleine Dinge is actually found under the title Le cose piccoline. If you are interested in Der kleine Hey, the ISBN for the book is 3-7957-8702-5, and for the DVD 3-7957-6089-5. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, or email me at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

We're back from summer vacation with all-new episodes! This week's episode is from The Diction Police's Special Diction Unit--this is the audio version, for people who want to listen on-the-go. This week we focus on "Who is Sylvia" from Gerald Finzi's Let Us Garlands Bring. The text comes from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, and we concentrate in the open I [ɪ], as well as the differences and similarities between [ə], [ɜ], and [ʌ], as in the phrase "the dull earth". For the full video Tutorial of this episode, click here. We are in the midst of revamping our website, to include text readings as well as subscription capabilities, plus a blog page where you can find all of our Diction Lessons and Tongue Twisters for Singers series all in one place! Keep watching here or at the Facebook page for that to go live. As always, feel free to contact me here, on Facebook or directly at info@dictionpolice.com

Episode 81 (from The Diction Police: Special Diction Unit) covers the text to "Villanelle" from Berlioz' Les nuits d'été. Dr. François Germain leads us through the text, focusing on some deceptive pronunciations and liaisons as well as vocalic harmonisation.  This is the audio version of the podcast. For the full video tutorial, click here. We are in the midst of revamping our website, to include text readings as well as subscription capabilities, plus a blog page where you can find all of our Diction Lessons and Tongue Twisters for Singers series all in one place! Keep watching here or at the Facebook page for that to go live--our goal is for September 10, 2016! As always, feel free to contact me here, on Facebook or directly at info@dictionpolice.com

In Episode 82 (from The Diction Police: Special Diction Unit), Simone de Felice walks us through the diction rules applicable in Scarlatti's "Se Florindo è fedele". This is the audio version of the tutorial--the full video tutorial is available on iTunes or at our website. Our new website will be going live within a few hours! Be sure to come to www.dictionpolice.com to check it out and subscribe to get all of our premium content, like text reading videos, and IPA transcriptions, as well as poetic and word-for-word translations! And if there are texts you are looking for that we don't offer yet, please contact us at info@dictionpolice.com to let us know, so that we can develop the repertoire that you need.

Mirko Roschkowski leads us through the text to "Wir wandelten", focusing on alliteration in German poetry, the difference between "gebe" and "gäbe", and glottals in the middle of words. No need to go looking for the text, because you can follow along with the text and IPA right here! This is the audio version of the podcast--the full tutorial with video is also available. Our new website is live! Be sure to come to www.dictionpolice.com to check it out and subscribe to get all of our Special Diction Unit premium content, like text reading videos (with normal and slow speed text readings), and phonetic transcriptions, including poetic and word-for-word translations! And if there are texts you are looking for that we don't offer yet, please contact us at info@dictionpolice.com to let us know, so that we can develop the repertoire that you need.

'Tis just about the Messiah season, and time to start working on our diction for it! This week's Tutorial covers "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion", focusing on what happens when 't's and 'd's come together and how to deal with 'r's in English Diction with Jason Nedecky. We have already worked through some of the Messiah arias on the podcast (Comfort Ye Episode 66/Rejoice Greatly Episode 67); the complete Messiah, including IPA transcriptions and text readings by Jason Nedecky (our contributor for this episode), is available at The Diction Police: Special Diction Unit! All of the Special Diction Unit premium content is available at www.dictionpolice.com either by subscription or individually! If there are texts you are looking for that we don't offer yet, please contact us at info@dictionpolice.com to let us know, so that we can develop the repertoire that you need. You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook or Twitter.

Since I just started a production of Les contes d'Hoffmann, we thought it would be the perfect time for some French Diction! Dr. François Germain and I discuss the text to Duparc's "Soupir", covering some of the digraphs in French and the concept of "déplacement de l'accent tonique"--the displacement of the tonic accent. This is the audio version of the Tutorial. The full video Tutorial is also available. For more Video Tutorials and Text Readings, or for the accompanying PDF for this Tutorial, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

In Episode 86, Jason Nedecky and I work through the text to Purcell's "Sound the Trumpet", focusing on diphthongs, glottals, and the unstressed open [ɪ] in English Diction. This is the audio version of the podcast.

I had also promised to post some of the articles on sleep that I've seen over the years:

Sleep and learning

Sleep and Preventing Illness

Health benefits of sleep

There are lots more, I'll be posting them on the Facebook page all week!

For more Video Tutorials and Text Readings, or for the accompanying PDF for this Tutorial, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

In Episode 87, Simone di Felice helps us work through the text to "O del mio dolce ardor" from the 24 Italian Songs, focusing on phrasal diphthongs, the bright [a] vowel, and the LMNR rule. This is the audio version of the full video tutorial. 

This will be our last episode before our Holiday break--we'll be back on January 28, 2017, with all new episodes! In the meantime, we wish everyone a wonderful holiday and a very happy and successful New Year!

For more Video Tutorials and Text Readings, or for the accompanying PDF for this Tutorial, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

Happy 2017! We're starting off the year with some French Diction, discussing the text to Paul Verlaine's "En sourdine" with Dr. François Germain. This episode focuses on the letters 'c' and 'u', as well as some exceptional pronunciations like "sens" and "solennel". This is the audio version of the full video tutorial.

 

For more Video Tutorials and Text Readings, or for the accompanying PDF for this Tutorial, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, what better way to celebrate than to discuss the text to "Widmung" (Dedication)?! Mirko Roschkowski joins us to work through the lyric diction rules that come up, focusing on long and short vowels, Auslautverhärtung, and the different possibilities of the letter 'r'. This is the audio version of the podcast.

For more Video Tutorials and Text Readings, or for the accompanying PDF for this Tutorial, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

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 [a] and dark [ɑ] with Dr. Francois Germain, a coach and French Diction teacher on the faculty of the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. You can find the texts to these songs at The LiederNet Archive. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me here, on the Facebook page, or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com

In Episode 90, Jason Nedecky and I focus on the text to Purcell's "Sweeter than Roses", written as incidental music for Richard Norton's Pausanius, Betrayer of His Country. We concentrate on the different forms of the letter 'i' (both spelling and phonetic), some pronunciation shifts between American Standard and British Received Pronunciation, and glottals. This is the audio version of the podcast.

For more Video Tutorials and Text Readings, as well as our Facebook Diction Lessons and Tongue Twisters for Singers series, or for the accompanying PDF for this Tutorial, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

In Episode 91, Simone di Felice and I work through the text to Alessandro Scarlatti's "Già il sole dal Gange", talking a lot about consonants! This is the audio version of the SDU Tutorial.

For more Video Tutorials and Text Readings, as well as our Facebook Diction Lessons and Tongue Twisters for Singers series, or for the accompanying PDF for this Tutorial, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

This week, François Germain reads the text to "Après un rêve", and we talk about what happens to nasal vowels in liaison, the difference between [ɑ̃] and [õ], and open and closed vowels in French.

For more Video Tutorials and Text Readings, as well as our Facebook Diction Lessons and Tongue Twisters for Singers series, or for the accompanying PDF for this Tutorial, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

Episode 93 covers Heinrich Heine's text "Du bist wie eine Blume", which has been set over 380 times! Mirko Roschkowski leads us through it, focusing on the vowels [ə] and [ɐ], the difference between [ʃ] and [ç], and some phrases where back-to-back [t] and [d] need to be clearly articulated.

For more Video Tutorials, Text Readings, and PDFs with phonetic transcriptions as well as translations into several languages, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

In Episode 94 Jason Nedecky discusses "Where e'er you walk", one of the most famous arias from Handel’s Semele, concentrating a lot on the different forms the letter 'r' can take. This is the audio version of the podcast for people prefer to listen to podcasts while they’re out and about.

For more Video Tutorials, Text Readings, and PDFs with phonetic transcriptions as well as translations into several languages, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

This week, Simone di Felice discusses the text to Scarlatti's "O cessate di piagarmi", focusing on phrasal doubling, the double consonant [∫], and some spelling rules for the letter 'c'.

For more Video Tutorials, Text Readings, and PDFs with phonetic transcriptions as well as translations into several languages, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

In Episode 96, Dr. François Germain works through the text to Debussy’s "Nuit d’étoiles" with us, talking about the French schwa and when it’s not pronounced, the various combinations of 'ie', and a little on liaisons and elision. There are two versions of this episode—the full video tutorial or the audio version for people prefer to listen to podcasts while they’re out and about. This is the last episode before summer break--we'll be back with all new episodes on Aug 26, 2017! 

In the meantime, for all of The Diction Police podcasts, Text Readings, and PDFs with phonetic transcriptions as well as translations into several languages, please visit us at www.dictionpolice.com . You can also follow The Diction Police on Facebook and Twitter.

Happy Spielzeit! With the new school year/opera season upon us, it's time for some new episodes! This is the audio version of this episode--a full video tutorial is also available.

In Episode 97, Dr. François Germain leads us through the text to "Va, laisse couler mes larmes" from Werther, focusing on bright A, a little bit about nasal vowels, and a lot of subtext on this aria. For more information, go to dictionpolice.com

In Episode 101, Dr. François Germain and I talk about the text to "En fermant les yeux", the tenor aria from Massenet's Manon, focusing on nasal vowels and some normal spellings that may look complicated. This is the audio version of the podcast. For all of The Diction Police's resources, come to dictionpolice.com!

Since it's Messiah season, we wanted to post another aria for the basses! Jason Nedecky works through the text to "The people that walked in darkness" and it's preceding recitative, with an emphasis on handling 'r', the [æ] vowel, and aspirate 't'. This is the audio version of the video tutorial.

For more information, go to dictionpolice.com

Matteo Pais talks through the text to "Quando me'n vo'", Musetta's aria from La Bohème with us, talking about double and single consonants, some standard closed [e] endings, and pitching voiced consonants and glides. 

For more information, go to dictionpolice.com