--- Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...> wrote:
>
> Which language is best to study (with the given, as
> in
> most of my posts, that the goal is a good career
> singing opera in large international houses>
> One must study the basics of all singing languages,
> of
> course. Two or three years of French, German,
> Italian, and possibly Russian if your voice suits
> that
> type of music, is mandatory for a good career. So
> I'm
> not saying that any language should be shunted in
> favor of another -- being able to speak, understand,
> write, and pronounce well is the first step. I'd
> say
> three years of each as a minimum.
>
> So, you put in your ten years there (whew). But
> beyond that, which language should you choose to
> attain absolute, second-nature, dream-in-it fluency
> in?
Hello listers,
I struggle with this question also. As a voice
major in college, I am required to study French,
German, and Italian. I must take two semesters of one
of them, and one semester of the other two each. We
get to choose which one we concentrate on. And of
course, we have to take a semester of diction for each
of these languages. Because I took 3 years of French
in high school and had much success with it, I decided
to take only one semester of it in college, and only
one sememster of Italian, since they are both romance
languages and have some grammar similarities- I
haven't had too much trouble making word by word
Eng/It. translations using a dictionary for my songs
and arias. I have had a lot of trouble understanding
the German when doing my translations, so I decided to
study German for the full 2 semesters (which I'll
start this fall). Although I'm glad to have made that
decision, I know that in two semesters of any language
(basically 6 months) I can't expect any kind of
mastery of the language. So my question is, how do
singers continue to study languages after their
college years? Ideally one might spend time abroad,
but for those of us who don't, what have people done?
Thanks for sharing!
=====
April Salerno
B.M. in Vocal Performance
Baldwin-Wallace College
Class of 2002
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