Perfect Italian Diction for Singers

Perfect Italian Diction for Singers is an authoritative guide for singing the most beautiful and expressive Italian. This book is the culmination of decades of experience and insights by two noted Italian and American pedagogues and vocal coaches as they systematically home in on essential features of the most beautiful Italian, the main issues and pitfalls of non-Italian singers, and steps and tools to overcome them.

Timothy Cheek and Anna Toccafondi provide a step-by-step guide for singing flawlessly in this language, and, in addition to delving to the heart of Italian sounds and inflection, they present controversies, misconceptions, and various approaches—often conflicting—that have arisen throughout the last century for approaching Italian diction. Chapters also address:

• Italian style and legato
• Best use of supplemental resources and dictionaries
• Recitative with suggested, short Mozart excerpts
• Working with text
• Singing diphthongs, triphthongs, and hiatus

Also included are a plethora of audio and video examples and exercises (over seventy QR codes), written exercises for group or self-study, and self-assessment summaries at the ends of chapters. Careful study of this book will help to lay a solid foundation for communicating in beautiful lyric Italian.