About Phoenix French Coaching

Welcome!

Hi - and welcome to Phoenix, a specialist French coaching site, specifically for English-speaking classical singers who are interested in improving their French pronunciation for French art songs or operatic arias and roles.

I'm Deborah Lea, a former professional opera singer and now, coach!

The reason I have created Phoenix is that I have found over many years that French is often the forgotten language in the classical music repertoire of European language learning. Italian is very open, therefore the sounds are easy for an English speaker to reproduce; likewise German is pretty straightforward (with the exception of the U umlaut sound - A and O umlauts have English equivalents) and that leaves French lagging behind as the language which is a bit more difficult to sing, due to the unfamiliarity of certain sounds to English-speaking classical singers and the modifications required to make it all work correctly!

As a singer myself, I understand very well the difficulties presented to English-speakers in reproducing French sounds without restricting the vocal production, particularly for those singers without any formal training in the language.

But French is a beautiful language and it is also beautiful to sing, provided you have the correct method of pronunciation! And you don't have to learn the whole language in order to be able to do that effectively!

What I Do

The most important point to note is that I do not teach traditional phonetics for French with representative symbols. There is nothing wrong with this method at all, but my personal feeling is that it can sometimes make things more difficult for students, as it basically requires you to learn a whole host of different symbols representing the sounds - another language on its own! There are also many different forms of these symbols around, which can make life even more complicated.

I have devised a simple rule system, based on the French text itself, so that singers can refer to it when looking at a French piece and learn to work out the pronunciation for themselves, without having to sit through an entire French language study course!

All standards of language knowledge can be catered for - I aim to make the learning process enjoyable, as well as informative! You don't have to be fluent in French or even have a basic grasp of the language to be able to learn how to sing French music correctly.

So the aim here is to learn French pronunciation through working directly on French song or aria texts and their translations, looking in detail at the sounds and relating them in a way that English-speaking singers can understand and reproduce without restricting the vocal production.

C'est simple, non..? ;-)

Coaching Options

I offer a variety of coaching options to suit all requirements:

- Individual coaching sessions

- Courses (8 lessons)

- Class sessions (up to 5 participants per class)

- Vocal Coaching Sessions (where we put together the pronunciation work with the music to produce the final package!)

I also offer:

- Translations

(literal translations of texts, to enable best possible

interpretation of the piece)

Please see my Contact Us page for more details and if you would like more information, please get in touch via the page!

Oh yes ...and please have a look at my Reviews below and my Testimonials page!