Cavesa wrote:Hi,
I love your log. I am a beginning amateur singer, I've been taking lessons for one year now and it has been one of the best decisions of my life. One of the many benefits: it has been helping me with some aspects of the Italian and German pronunciation, despite the fact that the spoken and sung pronunciation differ in certain aspects (for example, I've finally learnt the doppio consonants). Understanding the lyrics is very important to me. It also helps me memorise the aria or song. But I must admit I sometimes have too much to focus on at once, so I sing blablabla for the few notes in question even with the part in my hand.
What do you like to sing the most in each of the languages, if I may ask? I am curious.
I've noticed there is little classical music in Spanish, that is true. But would you still happen to know about something good? It may be a very interesting experience. Even if it is not something I could sing, I'd love to listen.
Wow, you opened up a can of worms! Wall of text incoming.
First of all, I'm glad you enjoy my log, and from an advanced amateur singer, I wish you the best of luck as a beginning amateur singer! I'll start here talking a bit about Spanish (and Czech) music, then about singing, and then finally about my favorite music to sing and listen to.
Czech Classical Music
You're very lucky to be a Czech speaker learning classical singing. A lot of very popular operas were written in Czech so if you ever decide on a career in opera, you have a great niche! If you haven't already, check out the operas of Smetana (most famous: The Bartered Bride), Dvorak (most famous: Rusalka), and Janáček (most famous: The Cunning Little Vixen). I'm sure these composers all have great art songs too.
Spanish Opera
Your best place to start is Zarzuela, and your best source for Zarzuela recordings would be Placido Domingo. He comes from a Zarzuela family, and he got his singing start in Zarzuela before he moved on to standard opera.
Other great Spanish opera singers are José Carreras, Victoria de los Ángeles, Monserrat Caballé, and Alfredo Kraus. José Carreras is Catalan, and I don't know if de los Ángeles and Caballé are also ethic Catalans but they're from Barcelona, and I believe all three have recordings in Catalan as well as Spanish. Other great Spanish-speaking opera singers from around the world are Rolando Villazón, Luigi Alva, and Ramón Vinay. (I'm using present tense here but many of these singers are retired or dead)
Juan Diego Flórez is arguably the best operatic tenor there is right now. He's Peruvian and I'm sure he has plenty of good material in Spanish.
I'm not really familiar with Spanish art songs, but I'm sure they're out there and I'm sure that these singers have recordings of them.
Spanish Choral music
I've sung in a lot of choirs and I can think of two Spanish-language choral pieces that I've sung, both contemporary:
Paul Carey - El Limonar Florido: I was lucky enough to sing at this piece's premier! I don't know if there's a recording of that, but if you follow the link there's a full recording of another performance.
Osvaldo Golijov - La Pasión según San Marcos - This is mostly in Spanish with some Aramaic. I think we sang a couple of movements towards the end. The libretto is here.
Shadowing
Probably 75% of the progress I've made in singing had come from shadowing recordings my favorite singers (like shadowing a language, but you do your best to sing exactly like them). For the best results, try to find a singer whose voice is close to the same pitch as yours; if you try to exactly imitate a singer whose voice is too different from yours, you'll do the right things on the wrong notes and you'll hurt yourself. You need to have the basics down to really take advantage of this, so pay a lot of attention to your teacher, especially the breathing and intonation. Once you have those down, you can figure out most of the rest on your own.
Overtones
This is going to sound really bizarre, but one of the best things you can do for your classical singing is to listen to throat singing. I'd recommend the recordings of Kongar Ol-Ondar and Hun-Huur-Tu for Tuvan throat singing. Mongolian throat singing is similar but I'm not as familiar with it. Practice singing along a bit (but stop immediately if your throat starts hurting). You don't need to be able to throat sing perfectly, the important thing is just to be aware of the overtones in your voice. You will eventually notice that a lot of the best opera singers focus certain overtones when they sing. When you get to a really advanced level, you will find that you can sing high notes at any volume with very little effort if you're hitting the right overtone just right (this also presumes that you're doing everything else just right too). This can help you pull off the most impressive trick an opera singer can do, which is to start a note loud and then fade to almost nothing, like at the end of this clip by Franco Corelli:
I've only ever heard tenors and sopranos do this, but there's no reason other voices couldn't also pull it off.
Favorite music
My training is mostly in art songs, with some opera arias mixed in. But honestly, one of my favorite things is to be stuck in traffic alone, singing along with my favorite opera singers. That's a secret, don't tell anyone.
Here's my favorite opera and art song music to sing and/or listen to, by language:
- German: My favorite Lieder are by Schubert (especially his three song cycles Winterreise, Die schöne Müllerin, and Schwanengesang, and I also love the song "Erlkönig") and Brahms (Vier ernste Gesänge, and a lot of great individual songs). In terms of opera, there's a ton of great stuff in German but my favorite is Wagner. I tried to get some Wagner played at my wedding but we're Jewish so that was vetoed pretty hard.
- French: There are lots of great French art songs (chansons or mélodies, I'm not sure if there's a distinction). Fauré, Débussy, Ravel, and Poulenc have some great ones. My two favorite French art songs to sing are "Beau soir" by Débussy and "Après un Rêve" by Fauré. My favorite French operas are Pélleas et Mélisande by Debussy, La fille du régiment by Donizetti, Carmen by Bizet, and Faust by Gounod.
- Italian: Honestly I go by favorite singer rather than favorite composers in Italian: there are so many classics and everything's great. My favorite Italian singer is Franco Corelli (see above), and all of his recordings are amazing. In terms art songs, the first introduction to singing classical music was going through the famous compilation 24 Italian Songs and Arias; you probably already have a copy but if not you should grab it. It's a staple for any vocal student.
- Russian: I barely speak a word of Russian, but I love the music! In my opinion, Rachmaninoff's "All Night Vigil" is the greatest choral work ever written in any language. I've sang a few movements of it in a few different choirs, and it honestly single-handedly made me decide that I need to learn Russian one day. There are also great operas and art songs by Tchaikovsky and Mussurgsky. Some old school singers to check out are Fyodor Chaliapin, Galina Vishnevskaya, and Sergei Lemeshev (Latin character spellings vary). Vishnevskaya and Lemeshev have a great recording of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin
That's it for now (whew!). I'll need to start posting YouTube clips of my favorite singers later on! Classical music is a terrific resource to get exposure languages from all over Europe, and more recently, all over the world and throughout history. For example, John Adams (but not that John Adams, and not the other one either) is a contemporary American composer with operas lyrics in Sanskrit, ancient Egyptian, and ancient Babylonian. Western Classical music is also hugely popular in East Asia, and I've heard that composers there have started writing in their own languages.