Buy videos with pronunciation and IPA transcription of the most famous Italian art songs and arias!
In each video, you will see how I articulate each word, together with the IPA transcription. First, I will read the lyrics at a normal pace, to give you a real taste of the inflection of the language, then at a slower pace, to show the articulation of each sound.
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Are you a voice teacher using Italian repertoire in your studio?
These videos will provide you with complete knowledge of the repertoire in use at colleges, auditions, and on stage. Get all the nuances of the language by watching and listening to a native speaker articulating all the words. The combination of audio/video, together with IPA transcription, will clarify some concepts like open and closed e/o, assimilation of n, and phrasal doubling.
Are you a singer preparing an audition or a recital? Have you always wondered how to become more expressive in your recitatives and arias?
These videos will help you become comfortable with Italian while gaining ease on your singing and legato. In each video, you will have the opportunity to watch and listen to a native speaker, getting an accurate perception of the sounds and how to form them.
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How to Best Use the IPA-Videos
Diction can be a powerful tool to enhance performance, giving the artist the possibility to express authentically while remaining truthful to lyrics and music. While Italian is an easy language to approach, its nuances are often difficult to master. My goal is to help singers understand the characteristics of the speech patterns that make Italian a language conducive to singing. Listening to those sounds, recognizing how they are formed with a precise movement of the articulators, and comparing those movements to the ones that are innate in the singer’s native language, is key to fully benefiting from singing in Italian.
While watching these videos, I encourage you to focus on the legato line, knowing that it is especially affected by how we articulate consonants. As for open and closed vowels, please note that the terminology open vs closed gives us a misleading idea of two sounds opposite to each other. However, when singing the two vowels sounds are very similar and they can be used as nuances. Based on voice type and range, the singer might need some adjustments for resonance tuning purposes. Knowing the sound of the spoken word will help us feel free to make those adjustments.
The Specifics...
All the IPA transcriptions include assimilation of “n” and phrasal doubling (rafforzamento sintattico), which is the lengthening of many word-initial consonants when preceded by specific words.
The symbol [‿] is used to connect the final vowel of a word with the initial vowel of the following word when the two sounds should be sung as a diphthong, with no interruption or glottal stop. When the second vowel is the same, I decided to transcribe the two words as one unique word, again to help singers not to add any glottal stops. The singer will see the word with two accent marks, deriving from the two separated words.
The diacritical mark [ː] is here used only to elongate a vowel in the case of the diphthong. In order to keep the IPA transcription as functional and easy to follow as possible, I decided not to add [ː] after stressed open syllables (those that end in a vowel.) I trust the singers will not anticipate the single consonant, keep the preceding vowel as long as possible.
Double consonants are here indicated with double letters.
