AMD 1

For my exploration of German outside of class I worked on learning the melody and text of a German Operetta piece by composer Franz Lehar. The piece is entitled Meine Lippen Sie Küssen So Heiß (My lips kiss with such fire) sung by the character Guiditta in operetta. I was looking for a fun playfully piece to learn for a vocal competition I was entering. The piece has a spanish gypsie feel and it seemed like it would be fun to sing and act out. I first started by looking up the song online and on youtube. I found many recordings online, among them by Diana Damrau, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, and Anna Netrebko accompanied by orchestra.
I first did individual work with the piece in a practice room by myself for 30 minutes. I played the pitches in order to the melody in my head. I then attempted to speak through the German. I usually print out a sheet from online that includes all the phonetic alphabet that helps me to pronounce the words. Unfortunately for this piece, there was no ipa and translation that I could find online. I then realized that I would have to use the tools that I am currently learning in German diction  to figure out long and short vowels. After attempting to write up my own version of the ipa in my music I then took it to my coaching where I was able to work on it with a collaborative pianist on staff here at the school of music.  We had had a 30 minute coaching where he helped to correct my diction and help me work on musicality, text expression, and tempo. After getting his help I was able to go home, taking the text and speaking it to the rhythm of the song. This helped me to get the text fluid and natural. I practiced this for a couple days also studying the translation so that I knew what I was singing.
A few days later I was able to record this song with my pianist to enter into the competition along with another german Mozart aria. The entire process was rather quick for how long it usually takes me to learn music and have it ready to perform but it was good preparation for the business where one would be asked to learn entire opera roles in just a few months.
Below I have included a video of the operetta  performed by Anna Netrebko: