It can’t be that hard, can it? After all, most 3- and 4-year-olds can do it. Singers, however, have left their carefree toddlerhoods behind—but we still face the daunting prospect of learning one or more foreign languages.
You may be able to learn a language sitting in a classroom—but it’s better to do what those toddlers do: find a situation where you can immerse yourself in a language as completely as possible, maybe to the point of fluency, so that you can think in that language at a moment’s notice—and sing a role in it onstage.
During conversations with experts in the opera field, two ideas surfaced frequently: schools do not offer enough language study, and to be successful as a singer you have to be serious about learning languages.
One option for language immersion: Visit a country where it is spoken. That is not practical for many singers—but you can find other ways to learn, including studying with
a native speaker (a language teacher), using computer programs, and listening to recordings of singers.
Computer and audio programs
Just as the process of learning is different for every person, choosing among available software is subjective. It all depends on how you think you will best absorb the material. For example, two programs, “Rosetta Stone” and “Pimsleur,” offer contrasting approaches: “Rosetta Stone” emphasizes images; “Pimsleur” is almost completely auditory. A third program—“Instant Immersion” from Topics Entertainment—combines both video and audio courses.
“‘Rosetta Stone’ is designed for anyone … who wants to learn a new language, especially for those who are starting at the very beginning and want to develop the whole language,” says Duane Sider, director of learning for Fairfield Language Technologies. The company offers courses for 29 languages, and none of the programs use translations. “You never encounter your native language in the program,” Sider says.
Instead, “Rosetta Stone” incorporates “Dynamic Immersion” and relies on images, interactivity and instinct. More than 8,000 real-life images help you associate the meanings of words with recognizable images. The program’s interactivity lets you see and hear how a word and its meaning are attached, and the computer gives feedback when you indicate that you understand the meaning. Each of us learned English, Sider explains, so the program uses the language-learning instincts that helped us the first time.
“Rosetta Stone” uses only native speakers, and the program is flexible. You decide if you want to study listening, speaking, reading and/or writing; you decide if you want Level 1 or Level 2, or both; and you decide if you want to use a CD-ROM or the Internet (both versions offer the same content).
“Pimsleur” offers more than 30 languages, and the courses encompass 10, 30, 90, or 100 lessons. Every lesson is 30 minutes or shorter—“Pimsleur” does not recommended working through more than one lesson each day.
“Some people, especially when they get further along in the program, need to repeat a lesson more than once, which is fine within the methodology, but to try to rush through it is completely counterproductive,” says Whit Waterbury, director of Pimsleur Language Programs.
The method is based on “Gradual Interval Recall,” whereby the program introduces words and grammatical structures at various stages and re-introduces them to make you recall them.
“[Paul] Pimsleur believed you learn languages best the way you learned them as a child, and that’s what he was trying to emulate, which is all by listening and repeating,” Waterbury says. Using this strategy, the three levels of each program (Spanish and German have four) are designed to be used sequentially.
“Pimsleur” teaches how to speak, so it uses only CDs.
“The program is 95 percent auditory,” Waterbury says. “There is some reading material, for a visual sense of what you’re saying.”
You can sample a lesson on the company’s website,
www.pimsleur.com, or on several other sites.
“Instant Immersion,” another product available on the market, combines both sight and sound. Depending on the level you choose (such as Software Standard, Software Deluxe, Audio Standard, Audio Deluxe or Platinum), the CDs and CD-ROMs feature hundreds of hours of instruction.
“We include beginner, intermediate and advanced courses all in one box—all developed by linguistics experts,” says Cynthia Pang, director of public relations for Topics Entertainment. “Instant Immersion’s software courses reinforce your learning progress with video technology and supplemental phrases. The audio courses provide effective, progressive instruction in all the basics of structure, syntax and grammar, emphasizing the building blocks of proper speech and conversational skill-building.”
Berlitz, a company that has been helping people learn languages for more than a century, bases its products on audio learning.
“It helps people to hear the language and to know about the way it sounds,” says Johanna Reilly, a publicist for Berlitz. “It involves very little ‘workbook’ work.”
The Berlitz product line incorporates various combinations of CDs, booklets and transcripts of what you are hearing. “All-in-One,” for example, comes with 14 CDs, encompasses several Berlitz programs—including Rush Hour (more about that in a moment)—and is Reilly’s recommendation for singers, because it has the broadest range and presents basic background.
Whichever product you choose, Reilly says that personal preference is always paramount. “That’s one of the biggest pushes that Berlitz has. It’s on your speed, it’s on your time, it’s however you feel comfortable,” she says.
Howard Beckerman, president of Heartworks, International (a company that has produced language programs published by Berlitz), developed Rush Hour with the idea that music can help teach a language. Beckerman describes the program as a user-friendly way to understand the basics of a language, focusing on everyday situations.
“The idea is that attaching the words and the expressions to a melody makes them easier to remember. The language learning process should be fun as well as useful,” he explains.
Understanding grammar
When figuring out how to speak a language, dissecting the grammar can help tremendously with interpretation.
“If they can get at least a skeletal knowledge of grammar so at least they understand where the verb is, and how to look at a verb, how to figure out what tense it’s in, that can be just a few months of study to begin to tear the language apart a little bit,” says Brian Zeger, artistic director of the Department of Vocal Arts at The Juilliard School.
Speaking of verbs, many European languages use tenses English barely uses. David Adams, professor of voice and head of the Performance Studies Division at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati, mentions the subjunctive tense. “Understanding when and why the subjunctive is used, and knowing the difference
between subjunctive and indicative verb forms, is an indication of a deeper understanding of a language,” he says. As an example, Adams turns to Verdi’s Aida.
“Radamès says ‘Se quel guerrier io fossi’ – ‘If I were that warrior.’ Italian libretti are full of present and past subjunctive forms of ‘essere’ : sia, siano, fossi, fosse, fossimo, fossero. Typical first-year Italian classes don’t get to the subjunctive, so student singers are usually clueless about these forms and are hard-pressed to translate them, because they don’t even know what verb they are from,” Adams says.
Robert Cowart, head of language for The Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, believes vowel sounds are more important than many singers realize.
“Every vowel choice is also a vocal choice. What is the difference between an Italian ‘ah’ and an American ‘ah,’ for example … What does the tongue do for the one as opposed to the other?”
Learning on a tight budget
Should the money spent to learn a language be considered as important as any other money you spend to build a career? Yes. Language is a crucial part of the process, one that could be your ticket to career-launching opportunities, especially if diction coaches are judging you at competitions.
Juilliard’s Zeger is sympathetic to the financial pressures, but points out that judges expect proper diction and cannot pass singers who do not meet necessary standards.
“Money spent on voice lessons is crucial, and [money spent on] good coaches, but the language is equally important,” he says.
Zeger does offer advice, though, that could make the money seem like less of a burden as time passes.
“If someone is really strapped, and is just concentrating on getting their ‘five aria’ package in shape, they need to spend the money to at least get those five arias up to the condition where they can begin to get hired.”
This question about the importance of language in the big picture elicits a passionate response from Nico Castel, staff diction coach at the Met and a professor at Juilliard, who has spent more than 50 years as a singer, diction teacher, and coach.
“My contention always is that language and diction are the stepchildren of the vocal arts,” says Castel. “People always address the disciplines that they think must be foremost: ‘First, I have to learn how to sing, then I have to learn the music and then I kind of go ahead and find out what it means.’ And then, as the last thing, two days before their debut at Carnegie Hall, they call me up and say, ‘Oh, Mr. Castel, would you please tell me how to pronounce this properly?’ And this I find absolutely unnerving, that they leave this for last. It should be done at first, when they first learn the first notes of the pieces that they want to learn. You don’t leave it for last. You will not fly in a true, serious career in this business with bad pronunciation.”
Knowing how it sounds
Singing is not an automatic extension of what you see on the page. Knowing the background of what you are singing is another important part of the process, because the background has a major influence on shaping how and what you sing. Part of that background is knowing how the language sounds as the language itself, hearing those words pronounced, before music enters the picture.
“Every language has its own melos. There’s a certain way in which each language is inflected, and where accents rise and fall in the declamation of a sentence. I think you have to know how a line would be said, and that informs the way in which it’s idiomatically sung,” says Richard Pearlman, director of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists.
Possibly the best way to hear a language spoken, besides visiting a country, is through a language teacher.
“You have to have a teacher who knows the language and who can say the language to the singer, orally, so that you can hear it and put it on a tape-recorder and then duplicate what the teacher says,” Castel says. “The dictionary provides pronunciation with the IPA, but a singer has to be very, very careful, because sometimes the IPA may give him an impression in his mind of a sound that’s not exactly idiomatic for that particular language.”
Both Pearlman’s and Castel’s sentiments about knowing how words are spoken complement Zeger’s thoughts about knowing what the words mean.
“It’s terribly important that singers really do a thorough job of translating and making sure they truly understand what they’re singing all the time,” says Zeger. “I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is trying to memorize a role too fast—essentially, memorizing it by rote and not really underpinning their words in a foreign language with a really thorough understanding of what they’re saying.”
Sequence of languages
All of the experts suggest beginning with Italian—and mention that most singers start with it because of the Italian vowels—but the language you choose could be based on your voice type, your repertoire, or your goals. Voice teachers can help with those decisions. Castel mentions that Italian songs of the 15th and 16th centuries are good for the voice, and you can advance to French chanson or German Lieder, such as those of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms.
Whatever language you choose as the starting point, you can, if you feel confident enough, study multiple languages simultaneously. Different languages might, at a certain point, become a necessity.
“If you’re a senior undergrad, and you want to go to grad programs, or you want to get into Young Artist Programs, they’re going to want their five arias and a couple of songs, and they’re going to want them in different languages,” Zeger says.
Cowart says it depends on how much time a student can commit to the second language. “It’s OK to start working in a second language, provided they will not take time away from their Italian for that second language. There’s no conflict. The two languages help each other, rather than getting in each other’s way. But they can really conflict if you’re just kind of dabbling around in the two. It has to be quite structured.”
Listening to recordings
Aside from computer and audio programs, textbooks, dictionaries, and language teachers, some of the most valuable tools for studying languages are recordings of singers, past and present. Pearlman thinks too many developing singers listen for the high notes, instead of taking the approach that the singer they are hearing was a great stylist in a particular language, even when their voice may have no longer been in its prime.
Cowart says the positives are as important as the negatives.
“They should listen to a wide variety of singers—ones that they like, and ones that they don’t like,” he says, because if you hear something you do not like, you will know you do not want to do it that way. In that sense, it is all part of the learning process, because you learn what is wrong for you.
Additional resources
Castel provides tapes for people who live outside the New York City area. Via his website, castelopera.com, you can arrange to send him your music by mail, and in return, he will speak the text, provide translations of every word, and mail back the cassette and music.
For singers studying Italian, David Adams recommends the book Grammar and Translation for the Italian Libretto, by Richard Berrong.
Foreign movies can help, says Pearlman, because you can associate sounds with body language.
You can also visit the library—Zeger thinks literature provides excellent background to various roles.
“It’s worthwhile to read English translations of classic works, like ‘Werther’ [Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther] or ‘Manon’ [Abbé Prévost’s Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut],” he says, “to get a flavor of the society from which the works come.”
