Whenever our choir sings anything in a foreign language, we’re always taken through the translation, so that we understand the meaning, where the word stresses should be etc. After singing for a number of years most of us now have at least a basic knowledge of Italian, German and French.
Slightly off topic - not opera singers, but I knew quite a few Germans who performed in American/British musicals professionally. When you heard them sing, you would think they were born in the US or UK, but after the show when you would ask, “Where did you learn to speak English so well?” they couldn’t answer the question, as they did not speak enough English to understand what you were asking.
Some people simply have the talent (ear for it?), and take the time, to learn how to sing in another language phonetically, without actually speaking the language at all. Many pop singers in Germany (and other non-English speaking countries) sing their songs in English, but still could not converse in the language.
Yep. That’s what prompted my initial question. Thanks for the response.
I don’t think that it is true that Pavarotti couldn’t read music. It was an accusation in an unauthorized biography of a man who was so bitter that I couldn’t read past the introduction. It was very much a personal attack on Pavarotti.
What I have come across other places is that he could read music but not scores. Additionally, he didn’t have a gift for language so his understanding of what he was singing, as well as his inflection, could have been better.
As far as understanding opera singers, I am good from baritone to mezzo, and can understand dramatic sopranos. Lyric and coloratura sopranos are impossible for me in their upper registers even when they sing in English. It’s one of the reasons that I didn’t like Peter Grimes…if it’s in my native tongue, I feel like I should be able to understand it. When the libretto is in another language I don’t feel bad about not making out words.
I don’t mean to hijack, but Le Ministre, would you mind recommending a good mezzo or soprano to listen to for French diction? I am tackling an aria or two from “Carmen” without having any experience in speaking French.
The number one with a bullet, you must get this book, run to the library, order it from wherever as soon as possible book is Thomas Grubb’s Singing in French. It is indispensable.
Recordings - well, I work frequently with a conductor who says “You should do one of two things - listen to none of them or listen to all of them!”
That being said, I did the smart thing and asked my FaceBook friends their opinions - I’ll pass them on once they’ve had a chance to respond. I’m a terrible person to ask about recordings because I went nuts when I worked at A & A records in the '80s and I all but stopped buying when I left that job.
I wish I could see inside it before I buy. I don’t know how I would learn to pronounce French well from a book if I don’t know what it’s supposed to sound like. For what it’s worth, my voice teacher thinks I’m doing fine, but I worry about only having one person’s input.
I would never recommend learning diction exclusively from a book - that being said, some of his descriptions of the sounds themselves make it much easier to form the sound. For example, in the passage on the mixed vowels, his description of how to form the vowels is bang on. For the sound in ‘lune’ ([y] in IPA), it is the tongue position of * (like ‘ee’ in English) plus the lip position of (like ‘oo’ in English). Put the two of those together, and that’s the sound. Beautiful. Simple.
One of the challenges of singing in French is that you pronounce a word differently in isolation than you do in the context of a sentence. For example, the word ‘grands’ (adjective meaning ‘big’, here modifying a plural noun.) would be pronounced differently in the phrases ‘de grands libres’ and ‘de grands arbres’. In the first, the ‘s’ would not be pronounced. In the second, the ‘s’ would be pronounced as a [z] sound. This is liaison, and it is a difficult subject for non-native speakers of French. To make matters worse, liaison is different in conversation than it is in singing. Some liaison are compulsory, some are optional (a matter of taste and a source of controversy.) and some are forbidden. One of the useful things about Grubb is that he deals with liaison throughout the book, including a whole chapter devoted to the subject.
As I say, get it from the library first if you like, but I think it sets the standard for singers’ reference books.
You had asked about recordings - from among my FaceBook friends, Agnes Baltsa was the most recommended; Mignon Dunn, Tatiana Troyanos and Maria Callas were runners up. As I say, though, listen to as many as you can if you’re going to listen, and see if you can learn to pick out where x does something different from y (It is a certainty that they will - if everyone did it the same, there’d be no point in more than one recording ever.).
That is very helpful. I was afraid it would be full of IPA, which is yet another thing I need to learn.
Thanks so much, and tell your friends I appreciate their recommendations as well!
I would be remiss if I left you the impression that it wasn’t full of IPA. It is.
The good news is, in the discussion of each sound, its IPA symbol is given and the production of that sound discussed. By the end of that section, you will at least have a reference guide to every sound that is shown in IPA in the rest of the book and in other sources.
I meant just IPA without the descriptions. What you are describing sounds great. I need to learn IPA anyway. 
English does that as well, doesn’t it, in that some words are different when the noun after them starts with a vowel or a consonant? Exactly the same as in the example, and similar to the Spanish case where words which are feminine but start with an a take the male article in the singular to avoid “sounding bad” (“un águila” and “el águila”, but “unas águilas” and “las águilas”). I’m drawing a blank for specific English examples, though!
The (“ði”) and the (“ðə”) pop into my head. “the extreme” vs. “the bird”
And I found another one, “a” vs. “an”: someone who pronounces his hs should say and write “a herb”, someone who doesn’t “an herb”. I think it exists in many languages to some extent, but it’s one of those li’l details that are likely to trip anybody… they even trip people on their own first language sometimes.