In Singing in Greek: A Guide to Greek Lyric Diction and Vocal
Repertoire, Lydía Zervanos reveals to singers the vast riches of Greek
vocal music. Dating back to 1770, Greek art music-following the Western
European styles, often drawing on themes from folk music and motifs-long
awaits its rightful place in a truly international vocal repertoire.
Modern singers in search of new musical opportunities will find in
Singing in Greek the necessary tools to locate and perform art songs and
arias from this extensive national vocal repertoire. Concisely written
and full of practical advice, the book opens with an introduction to the
Greek alphabet and pronunciation, navigating the assignment of
International Phonetic Alphabet symbols. Zervanos covers such topics as
Greek vowels, digraphs, consonants, binary consonants, consonant
combinations, palatalization, basic Greek grammatical concepts and their
role in stress and length, syllabification, and punctuation-all
separated into easily referenced chapters and supported by online
recordings of native Greek opera singers. In the second half of Singing
in Greek, Zervanos offers a short history of Greek art music,
biographies of prominent Greek composers, texts of their most
representative works with IPA transcriptions, and word-for-word and
poetic translations, with arias and art songs chosen for all voice types
and levels. This book also includes indexes of direct vowel-to-IPA and
consonant-to-IPA transcriptions, as well as useful appendixes on
publications, organizations, and famous Greek poets. Singing in Greek is
a must-have resource for every singer, voice teacher, vocal coach,
collaborative pianist, and opera and choral conductor seeking to perform
and teach in this unique language, explore the wealth of music
available, and expand their knowledge of Greek repertoire.
