Introduction

The American singer who desires a career in opera has to be able to act, perhaps dance, look like a movie star, and sing expertly in at least four languages. The singer who aspires to a career on the concert stage must have at his command at least four or five languages, and is expected to pronounce them with even more refinement and skill than his operatic colleagues. The task of developing such language skill seems enormous; difficult it is, but not impossible.

Speaking a foreign language is difficult because of the problems of intonation, stress and cadence. Singers have most of these problems solved for them in advance by composers, who determine where the voice rises and falls, how long the syllables are, where pauses occur, and even where the stresses fall. But the singer is faced with a situation that the speaker can often slur over: he must sustain each vowel and consonant sound to satisfy the most careful listening. It becomes, for example, a matter of major importance whether the vowel is pronounced aw or [o], or as the English diphthong o-oo when it occurs as the first syllable of Ombra mai fu, held for four slow beats. At such times accuracy of pronunciation becomes tremendously significant.

All singers must study diction. But American singers, because their speech tends to be quite imprecise, in particular need to make a thorough study of phonetics and diction. Our vowels are vague and often back-produced. We tend to make diphthongs out of monophthongs, triphtongs of diphthongs. Our consonants are carelessly produced, often imploded, almost never clearly articulated, and the strong tonic stress of our language encourages us to slur over unstressed syllables. We practice bad diction in nearly every utterance.

American singers striving for good diction often erroneously believe that the solution to their problems can be found in a highly explosive production of consonants. While it is true that the consonants must be articulated more clearly in singing than in the usual sloppy speech of everyday, just as important for the singer (perhaps more so) is the production of clear and easily unidentified vowels.

Accuracy and clarity in pronunciation are the subjects of this book. But they are only first steps in the establishment of authentic style in language. Capturing the flavor and subtle colors is a skill resulting from long study of singers singing their native language. And the flavor and color are not the only benefits of accurate pronunciation: often vocal production makes a startling and immediate improvement when the articulation of vowels and consonants becomes clear. Diction might be called the orchestration of singing, and far too many singers neglect the wide range of possibilities for color found in the spectrum of vowel and consonant sounds.

The symbols sued throughout this book are those of the International Phonetic Association. Singers who grumble at having to learn another alphabet may soon find the symbols a remarkably economical shorthand, useful in self-reminding, and an aid in teaching once a sound has been associated with its symbol. For, while spelling varies greatly form language to language, a symbol always represents one sound – a help in assisting singers in using the many excellent pronouncing dictionaries now available.

The multi-lingual approach to diction set out in this book was first developed in classes attended by Apprentice Artists at the Santa Fe Opera. It has been developed further at the New England Conservatory. It proceeds from American English, compares the vowel and consonant sounds of Italian, French, German and Ecclesiastical Latin with each other and relates them to sounds spoken in the United States. All too often foreign-born language teachers, lacking a clear understanding of English, have been unable to draw useful or even accurate parallels and find themselves in the position of the Russian teacher, who, in describing the Russian dark l, said that it was like the l in the English word lead, unaware that such a sound could only occur if the English word were pronounced with a heavy Russian accent.

Those wishing to pursue more intensive study will find Ralph Errolle’s Italian Diction for Singers excellent as are Madeleine Marshall’s Singers Manual of English Diction, Sieb’s Deutsche Hochsprache, and Fouché’s Traité de la pronunciation francaise, whose many footnotes point out the differences between conversational style and le style soutenu.

J.M.
Boston, 1969