Campbell Vertesi

I came across a new online language resource today: Mango.  It's an online learning system that covers Spanish, Russian, French, Italian, Mandarin, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Greek, and English.  It's just entered public "beta" testing, but it seems solid enough.  Give it a try!

Today Bryn and I started looking on the Internet for good resources for self-guided language study.  Since she's going to Austria all summer, it seemed like a good idea to brush up on her German beforehand!  I had done some previous research in the area of self-taught language, and it was great to get into some detail about the various courses available.

For opera singers, language fluency is one of the best perks and biggest obstacles to success. In the American training system, we are offered courses in Italian, French, and German at every stage of the game.  Coursework is typically supplemented with "diction" classes, which teach pronunciation, and if you're lucky, sung pronunciation. 

 Because it's not enough to simply learn the language with a decent native accent.  You have to learn how the language is sung.  In French for instance, there is an entirely separate pronunciation for performance and literary use, descended from the upper class French used by the nobility before the Revolution.  After the Revolution of course, the last thing you would want was to demonstrate "upper class" speaking habits like a dental rolled "R", so the daily use language took on many elements of what was once gutter French.  (Interesting side note: the settlers of Quebec still used the royal French accent . This accounts for much of the pronunciation difference between modern Quebecois and French)

So, we have to learn the language, learn to speak it in a stage context, and then learn how to sing it.  French - I'm just picking on that language today, I guess - can be a particular bitch to sing, because of all the nasal vowels in that language.  In terms of singing technique, nasality is the kiss of death!  So one must learn how to "cheat" these vowels, so that you give the impression of nasality without actually being nasal.

We even have to take diction courses in English!  Personally, I hate singing in English.  Too many mixed vowels, guttural consonants and the like.  It's a pain in the ass.

But all of this must start somewhere, which brings me back to learning the language.  You must understand every word you are singing!  Getting the gist of the sentence is definitely not enough.  There's word stress, and accent, and just the difficulty of making sung text sound natural.  This is especially  important in recitative or sprechtstimme, where the composer intended the text to sound almost as if spoken.  Furthermore, it makes memorizing pieces much easier!  I've found La Boheme actually easier to learn in the original Italian than in English translation!

So how do you go about learning a language? The first thing to know, is that classroom teaching is almost useless.  It is useful to learn the basic structure of the language before any further steps, but there are other, faster ways to learn this material!  I highly reccomend the site how-to-learn-any-language.com for detailed discussion of various tips and tricks, including reviews of the various language courses available.  They also have a great discussion forum, for aspiring polyglots.

Myself, I've found good success with the Pimsleur series of audiobook courses.  They don't give you a great vocabulary, but they do build a reasonable accent and a good intermediate understanding of the structure of the language.  Other popular (if expensive) programs are Assimil and the Rosetta Stone CDROMs.

For those of you in the "poor musician" category, make sure to have a look at the Foreign Service Institute language courses, available for free online.  These are the old tapes that used to be favored by the US Government when training officials in foreign languages.  They're a bit out of date, but most of the languages have updates, which explain how modern usage has changed.  Anyways, there are worse things than speaking like a refugee from the 70s, right?  I also hear that they're a bit tedious, but if you can't afford the paid programs (and don't have them at your local library), the FSI tapes are for you!

Ultimately, the only way to really learn a language is immersion.  You have to learn to trust your ability to communicate in the target language, and the best way to do that is to go somewhere you will HAVE to use your new skill!  Go to the target country, stay in a homestay situation where you will have to communicate in the language.  Make friends with a local, and socialize!  Get laid in the foreign language.  Seriously - it works!  Nothing drives you to try out a new language like a shot at a good looking girl (or guy)! 

  FOOTNOTE:You could do worse than sounding like a refugee from the 70s.  My sister once got lost in rural Greece, and managed to discover the bus schedule speaking only ancient Greek.  Can you imagine someone asking you for directions in olde Englishe?  Hilarious.

As regular readers (a fine, well read, muscular and good looking group) know, I didn't get to see the first video broadcast from the Met.  Die Zauberflöte, shortened, in English, and kid-friendly.  Zauberflöte (or as the met broadcast announcers say it, Zauberflrte) is one of my favorite operas, and it took me considerable thought to decide whether I liked the idea.

I got to hear a broadcast of this version (on my new Sirius radio!) yesterday, and I loved it.  I loved it so much, that I'm going to open a can of worms and say that I think we should do more opera in English translation.  Excuse me while I duck for cover.

 ...

The trouble with opera in the original language in America is, no one speaks the language.  Supertitles distract from the dramatic action and pull the audience out of the moment - not to mention that in comedy, the laughs come at all the wrong times.  If the audience ignores the supertitles, they are left listening to pretty gibberish.  An English translation allows performers to engage the audience, and keep them connected to the drama throughout the piece.

Unfortunately, the good name of English Translations is too often soiled by poor translations.  I hate to say it, but most of the Schirmer translations are just terrible.  Ruth and Thomas Martin translated their operas decades ago, and the syntax that was awkward then is even worse today.  In the old days (cue sepia video), theatres commissioned their own translations - some were good and some were bad.  Now we use the conseritavissimo, older-than-the-sun translations almost exclusively, and shock of shocks! Translated music sucks!  So now we go to the original language, and try to use the technology of supertitles (or seatback-titles) to make up for it.  Why is anyone surprised that this experience has a hard time provoking visceral emotional reactions from most audience members through anything but the raw power of the music?  The drama is never compelling anymore in opera, and I think that English translations would help a great deal.

 This recent Met Zauberflöte is the first example I've heard of an in-house translation, and it was wonderful.  Papageno was genuinely funny, and the Queen of the Night actually frightening!  Even Monostatos got laughs for his spoken comedy, not just his slapsticking!  This is unheard of in the the 'Flute.

I should mention: I would prefer to watch much of my opera in the original language.  But then, I speak Italian and French fluently.  99% of the audience is not in that position.

Quite apart from the audience's enjoyment, the other great benefit we'd reap from more emphasis on translated repertoire is a competitive advantage for works written in English.  The truth is, a translation can never be as good as the original.  So what do we see in countries that do a lot of translating?  In Germany, there is a distinct emphasis on opera written in German.  In Italy, they surprise by doing more works written in Italian.  "but they have a canon of works!" I hear you cry.  So do we.

English opera has been written for long enough now that we can start relying on our own language much more.  Gilbert and Sullivan aside (though I would love to see more of that), where is all the Britten?  The Barber, the Moore, the Menotti, the Strauss for crying out loud!  There is plenty of great English opera out there that gets ignored, or under-played.  Billy Budd and Peter Grimes are extraordinary pieces, but so is Gloriana.  The Devil and Daniel Webster and the Old Maid and the Thief seem to have disappeared completely... and who has actually seen the Tender Land or the Crucible?  I could go on for ages.  Apparently the Ballad of Baby Doe is still the second most performed English opera in the country, and when was the last time your local house played that?

If watching opera in English means more of this sort of repertoire, I'm all for it.  If it means a deeper understanding and connection to the foreign operatic canon for monolingual audiences, I'm all for it.  If all that comes at the price of the occasional crappy translation, I'll consider it a good deal.

PS: if you're interested in more American opera, check out usopera.com - a wonderful resource.  Write your local opera company and ask for some of these works by name.

 PPS - the most performed English Opera (if you were wondering) is Amahl and the Night Visitors, by Menotti.  It gets the added boost of being a Christmas opera, so there are thousands of churches that put it on every year.

(BTW, apologies for the non-post yesterday.  I was unexpectedly without internet all day!)

The last couple of days have seen the beginning of staging and choreography for HMS Pinafore, which is always great fun.  It has also seen dialog work for the principals, and I've found it an interesting experience.

What's so interesting about dialog?  It's only speaking, right!  Well, for a performer who's entire training is in singing, "just speaking" is actually pretty tricky.  What, you mean I have to inflect the voice?  I have to decide the way my speaking sounds?  And crazier still, I have to do it in an accent?

 Since so much of the show is about class structure, the various British accents adopted by cast members are important.  And let me tell you, delivering text with intent and dramatic direction in a thick cockney accent is not easy.  I've found it a lot like working in a foreign language (as I learned in my opera characterization class) - many of the same tricks apply.  I don't have much more instinct for how to motivate "awr wehthy captins choild waon't ave nuffin ta sai ter a chap loik yew" (Pinafore) than for "ei seht doch mal wass das mädchen für ein starrköpfiges ding ist" (Seraglio).

So what are those tricks?  The big one is paraphrasing: say the line in your own language, in your own words.  Swear as much as is comfortable.  Get a feel for how you would express this thought, and then go back to the foreign word. In the case of the German, my paraphrase is "look at what a bitch she is!" which carries a clear inflection for me.  In the cockney, "she's the daughter of the captain! What does she care about a bum like you?"

Another big trick for me is to work with my scene partner on expressing the intent of the line in arbitrary words.  This exercise can feel very personal, so I tend to do it with someone I know well, and then bring the experience to the rehearsal fully formed.  You stand about two feet away from each other arms at your sides, and look each other in the eyes. Even that level of vulnerability is downright frightening for most people - but that's our job.  Pick an arbitrary syllable like "bidi" or "do", and do your scene using one word for each of your character's thoughts (as distinct from each of his lines).  Do the whole thing without breaking eye contact or laughing.  It's very difficult.  Then do the same thing, using the actual line.  If you could do it in one set of arbitrary sounds, you can do it in another.

It's important to pay attention to the meaning of each individual word, for every member of the scene.  In a foreign language, it's worth doing the translation yourself, so you can get a sense not just of the general meaning, but of the flavor of the words.  Then get up there, and make sure you really listen to what your partner is saying.

This last is interesting: in real life, most people engage in conversation by speaking, and then waiting to speak again.  In any situation with tension however (ie anything that might end up in a play or especially, an opera) we listen intently and actively.  Indeed, even in scenes that are supposed to be casual encounters, active listening is critical, or you'll lose the audience.  You'll be delivering your lines and waiting for the next one, and the crowd will be off in la la land.  Not a good thing.

It's very helpful to have these tools at my disposal, and they've helped a lot.  Unfortunately, I'm sticking with a different problem lately: I know my lines, but the minute I get excited and "into" the moment, I get approximate with them.  My opening line for instance, is "Ah, little Buttercup - and well called - for you're the rosiest, the roundest, and the reddest beauty in all Spithead!"  Well, the moment I get up there, I come out with "the roundest, the rosiest and the reddest" or perhaps "the reddest, the roundest and the rosiest" - neither of which are quite what Gilbert intended.

I don't think that there's a cure for this problem except rote repetition until no other way will feel right to the character - but if anyone has any suggestions...?