Silly

I have been reading myself and find that I am silly. Perhaps I have always been silly, and perhaps I am acquiring silliness as I go along. I don't mind it, but perhaps some do.

Perhaps it is silly to worry about things like how to pronounce French, for instance. The French language does not include the concept of an unstressed vowel. The answer to the question, "Which syllable of Debussy do I stress?" is all of them.

Usually one bases ones decisions on the spoken language. One objective of pronunciation in singing is to make the words understandable. But what is one to do with vowels that are not spoken at all? So perhaps they are thinking of "je" and the E in "carte" as the same. Or at least the people coaching singers are thinking this. Perish the thought that you should do something different from what the coaches want, regardless of what Roberto Alagna and Regine Crespin do.