The Diction Police – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, Jason Nedecky is back to talk about unstressed vowels, the consonant cluster 'str', and triphthongs, using Purcell’s "Strike the viol".

The Diction Police website offers phonetic transcripts of texts, with word-for-word and poetic translations, text readings by native speaking opera professionals, along with a variety of video tutorials that are useful for both professional singers and for teachers to supplement their diction classes. The Diction Police was founded on the principal of native speakers pronouncing and discussing the diction of their own languages, and we continuously strive to offer the highest quality lyric diction resource possible.

Over the past 9 years of the podcast, we’ve now comprehensively covered the four main singing languages as well as many others, so from now on we’ll be releasing new episodes less regularly and only cover special topics, such as rare languages and dialects. All the previous episodes of the podcast will be available on iTunes and at the website, and all of our other resources and materials will still be available on the website through individual and studio subscriptions and now also through university library subscriptions!

Talk to your teacher about getting a subscription for your school or inquire for more information at info@dictionpolice.com

In Episode 114, Jason Nedecky leads us through the text to Purcell's "What can we poor females do?", talking about long vowels, the Daniel Sitteth rule, and the difference between the [ʌ] vowel and [ə]. 

 

For more information, go to dictionpolice.com ! 

In this episode, Dr. François Germain and I discuss the text to Paul Verlaine's "Clair de lune", which has been set by many composers, focusing on mixed vowels, the phonetic [k] sound, and some of the digraphs that make up French spelling. This is the audio version of the video tutorial.

 

For more information, go to dictionpolice.com !

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

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!

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

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 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

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

"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