To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
From: Barbara Miller
Subject: Solvejg's Song Pronounciation
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>RE: Solvejg's Song Pronounciation ["Kubiak, Laurence L SSI-SMMS" Some others have already jumped in to respond to Laurie's comment:

>...but what on earth are you doing singing in a language of which
>you don't have at least a working knowledge?

but I'd also like to add my two cents.

Yes, I have found myself having to work to get past a level of annoyance
when I hear non-English-speaking singers sing with a very heavy accent
(just as a German-speaking student I knew admitted she was annoyed hearing
American singers butchering German), and

yes, I found the Seattle Opera Company's recent production of Boris Godunov
rather disappointing because it seemed to me that the only lead singer who
understood the Russian words he was singing was the Russian singer doing
Boris. In the dramatic recitative that makes up so much of that opera
(particularly the original Mussorgsky version they used), you have to be
able to phrase the language intelligently to keep the audience caught up in
the drama.

That said, I think it is possible to sing a song effectively in a language
that you don't speak, or at least effectively enough that it is worth
giving the audience an opportunity to hear a piece that they might never
get to hear if they had to wait for a native speaker to come and sing it to
them.

I attended a master class given by Elly Ameling in Boston a few years ago.
Her recordings often include songs in unusual languages (I can think of
Basque, Japanese, Portuguese offhand, I'm sure there are more), in addition
to the standard ones that singers learn. During the question-answer period
I spoke of this wide range of languages and said that I suspected she
didn't speak all of them and asked how she prepared the songs. Her answer
was that she always worked with a coach who did know the language very
well. Personally, I'm glad that she did perform songs outside her group of
working languages, because there are some that I would probably not have
heard otherwise. I would have to leave it to native speakers of those
languages to evaluate whether or not she really did justice to the songs.
Thinking about this caused me to pull out her old "Souvenirs" LP and listen
to Charles Ives's song "Memories". She does sing it with an accent, and of
course there are plenty of Americans who can sing it without one, but I
don't find her version annoying. She does speak English (with the same
accent), so she certainly understands the words she's singing.

Then, of course, there are the recordings of arias translated into the
native language of the singer (e.g. German versions of Italian arias, and
vice versa). Is this a better solution? I don't know. I'd be inclined to
say that it depends upon who the artist is.

Barb Miller