Chat First, Pick Up Grammar Later

The acclaimed British-Australian baritone and vocal instructor David Wakeham has been living and working in German-speaking countries since 1993. He rarely gives a voice lesson to young singers without advice for learning German. For this blog, he answered some questions.

AIF: What role plays German as an operatic language for a singer who is starting out to make a career?

David Wakeham: If you are starting in Germany as a young singer, having German as a language makes working and living here easier. Also, opera companies appreciate the effort you are putting into your career.

AIF: What is it that makes you not only speak and sing in German but also love the language?

David Wakeham: I particularly love the structure of German and learning new words all the time.
German is not as harsh as people think. It is poetic, romantic and sings well.

AIF: What were for you the biggest challenges in aquiring the German language?

David Wakeham: The biggest challenge was to stop thinking in English and just jump into German and try.

AIF: What advice can you give to young singers who feel overwhelmed or intimidated by all the grammar rules and vocabulary?

David Wakeham: Don’t be overwhelmed by grammar and rules. Learn to talk and chat first, so you can live, and the rest you can pick up on the way. Learn to conjugate verbs as I feel they are important. And don’t be frightened to make errors.

AIF: What are your favourite German word?

David Wakeham: My favourite German words are Dudelsack* and hinterfotzig**.

[* Der Dudelsack means back pipe and stems from dudeln (tootle) and Sack (sack).]

[** The adjective hinterfotzig stands for conniving, sneaky, malicious. It is not the cleanest word. You should neither use it with police nor with the administration of an opera house even if you feel like. Use it with friends when you complain about police or the administration of an opera house and when you strongly want to make a point.]

After his European debut in 1993 at the Opernhaus Zurich, Mr. Wakeham sung at the Scala in Milano and the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, at the Theater an der Wien, the Komische Oper Berlin, Oper Leipzig, the Bayerische Staatsoper München, the Staatsoper Stuttgart, and Oper Bonn, performing major roles in the Czech, German and Italian repertoire. He also sung at Opera Australia. For the Berlin Opera Academy he works as a voice instructor. You can find more information about Mr. Wakeham at www.davidwakeham.com

 

 

 

Like it or Not – gefallen Leads to a Dative

Two dozen picky verbs want nothing else but a dative object (IV)

In the last few articles we learned about the dative, one of the four roles a noun can play in a sentence. If a noun, meaning a thing e.g. die Bühne (stage) becomes the location of an activity (singen), it get dressed in the dative. It changes the article (der to dem, die to der, das to dem, plural die to den):

Die Sopranistin singt auf der Bühne.

The dative is also involved every time we give or take something to someone:

Wir geben dem Bariton eine Blume.

In the most recent article, I listed nine prepositions, little words that define a location or a movement, that force the following noun to take a dative.

Wir gehen aus dem Opernhaus. Die Blume ist von einem Fan.

Now, the dative appears at its weirdest job – as an object of certain verbs. There are activities (verbs) that must stand alone without an object: Wir schlafen. We sleep. We cannot add an object, we cannot sleep chocolate. It is different with eating (essen) or singen: Wir essen die Schokolade und wir singen das Lied.

However, there are around two dozen verbs that are feeling too special to be like all the other thousands of verbs and many of them are, believe it or not, the most operatic:

vergeben (to forgive)
Gräfin Rosina vergibt dem Grafen.

drohen (to threat)
Die Königin der Nacht droht dem Reporter.

glauben (to believe)
Das Publikum glaubt der Königin der Nacht.

gehorchen (to obey)
Leporello gehorcht dem Bösewicht (villain).

befehlen (to order)
Don Pizarro befiehlt dem Gefängnisdirektor (prison ward), Florestan zu töten. Aber …

helfen (to help)
… Fidelio hilft dem Mann, Florestan. Er …

danken (to thank)
dankt dem Jungen. (Turns out it’s his wife Leonore in disguise!)

dienen (to serve)
Susanna dient der Gräfin.

gehören (to belong to)
Der Vogel gehört dem lustigen Papageno.

antworten (to answer)
Der Agent antwortet der Sopranistin. (If we answer a question or an email, we use beantworten without the dative: Ich beantworte die Frage.)

glauben (to believe)
Die Sopranistin glaubt dem Tenor. (Too bad.)

gefallen (to please)
Das gefällt mir! (That’s what you say when you click the thumb-up icon on Facebook.)

Next: Ich stelle mich vor or ich stelle mir vor – dative pronouns