Instructor: Timothy Cheek, School of Music, Theatre and Dance
Partner: Leonardo DeLisi, Cherubini Conservatory, Florence, Italy
Term: Fall 2020
Students in lyric diction voice classes engage with each other synchronously and asynchronous to discuss the cultural and linguistic contexts of the repertoires they are learning as well as their personal reactions and relationship to the music. They record audio/video files for each other for review and feedback. University of Michigan students are learning Italian Opera and students at the Cherubini conservatory are learning African American repertoire. This exchange will help students both refine their form (pronunciation and inflection), and bridge the gap between merely singing in a foreign language–even with complete knowledge of what they are saying–and actually communicating directly with another person on the stage and the audience, who are in this case native speakers of the language.