A unique summer language course in Vermont opens the door to opera singing in Germany

At Vermont's famed Middlebury Language School, opera singers perfect their German — right down to mastering the elusive umlaut.

Transcript

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

If you want to make a career as an opera singer, Germany, with 80 opera houses, is one of the best places to go. While mastering the German language can be tricky, a unique course at Middlebury College is designed to help. Vermont Public's Nina Keck has more.

NINA KECK, BYLINE: On a recent Friday, Stefan Rutter and eight students rehearse in a dark campus theater.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in German).

KECK: Rutter is music director for Middlebury's German for Singers course. He listens intently as students rehearse an opera by Mozart.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in German).

STEFAN RUTTER: (Speaking German).

KECK: "That's great," he tells them, but then he digs into it word by word. They sing it through another four times before he has them read the lyrics without singing to fine-tune their diction even more.

RUTTER: (Speaking German).

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Speaking German).

RUTTER: (Speaking German).

KECK: Umlauts - those two dots over German vowels are what he's talking about. They're tricky for those who aren't fluent in German.

RUTTER: The difference between the oh (ph) and the ooh (ph) because they feel similar to them, but for Germans, they're very different.

KECK: Total language immersion is one way Middlebury tries to break through. Participants sign a pledge to speak nothing but German for the entire seven-week course.

ASHLEY SCHUSSELBERG: The first week, I think, was just panic.

KECK: Twenty-one-year-old Ashley Schusselberg is a soprano from Long Island. She and Orlando Montalvo, a 28-year-old tenor from Providence, Rhode Island, admit the program is intense, but the immersion works.

ORLANDO MONTALVO: You know, we have class for, like, two hours a day, and then we have to eat lunch together in German. We are, you know, going to the bathroom in German. We're doing everything that we can in German. And I came in here blindsided. And I was, like, oh, wow, I actually can speak and defend myself in German now.

KECK: And, no, they're not cheating. The students were given special dispensation to speak with NPR in English.

Hannah Friesen, a 30-year-old who sings professionally in New York, says her biggest hang-up with German are consonant clusters - the PFs and TCHs.

HANNAH FRIESEN: Yeah, I think Italian is the easiest because it's more vowels than - I don't know. I feel like German is more crunchy.

KECK: Crunchy to the tune of $12,000 for this class - something Friesen considers an investment. Program director Bettina Matthias says German grants and student aid mean most students pay less. But it's a lot, she admits, which is why, in addition to history and culture lessons, she includes practical information about working in Germany.

BETTINA MATTHIAS: We talk about, what do you need to know to audition for an agent? What do you need to know to audition for an opera houses?

KECK: Like many in the class, Mitchell Widmer, a 32-year-old baritone from rural Iowa, wants to work in Germany.

MITCHELL WIDMER: At the end of the day, I know after this program that when I walk into an audition room with other Americans, or people from different countries than Germany, that my German is going to be so well-tuned that I will have an advantage.

KECK: Widmer and his classmates will get to try out their new and improved language skills in Germany this week. They'll perform Mozart's "The Pretend Garden-Girl" - "Die Verstellte Gartnerin." Yeah, there's an umlaut in there.

For NPR News, I'm Nina Keck in Chittenden, Vermont.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in German).

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