# Notable Classically-Trained Bilingual Singers



## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

I'm wondering how many famous singers were TRUE bilinguals, i.e., spoke at least two languages at a native level, having grown up with them. I do NOT mean "sounded good in multiple languages" or "lived in Germany as an adult and speaks fluent German." I'm looking for singers who are equally comfortable in at least two languages and RECORDED in them. Capital letters included for skimmers.

Some examples:

Adelina Patti: I know for a fact that her English was native, and her Italian sounds good to me too.

Emma Albani: Both her French and English sound native to me, and she grew up around both languages, but the recording quality is so awful that it’s hard to tell.

All the Neapolitans who recorded in Neapolitan and Italian:

Francesco Daddi
Fernando de Lucia
Enrico Caruso
Pasquale Amato
Giuseppe Danise
Enzo de Muro Lomanto
Francesco Albanese

I believe Fernando Orlandis spoke Italian and Florentine.

Gaston Micheletti: I think Corsican and French, though I don’t speak any Corsican.

César Vezzani: ditto

Giuseppe Bellantoni’s Italian seems fine, and he recorded a Sicilian song, so…probably?

Roberto Alagna: Italian and French for sure. I’m a bit skeptical of his Sicilian, but I don’t really know.

Thomas L. Thomas: Reported to be a native Welsh speaker, and he sang extensively in Welsh, but I’m a mite skeptical because he’s from Maesteg, which had a tiny Welsh-speaking population when he was born, and he spent most of his life in America. That said, I have no actual evidence that his Welsh was anything but native: I don’t speak any.

Bryn Terfel: Welsh/English, as far as I can tell.

Anne Lorne Gillies: Scottish Gaelic/English.

Kenneth McKellar: English and Scots.

Nicolai Gedda: Swedish and Russian, reportedly. Honestly, though, his Russian to me sounds more like that of someone who knows the language really well than that of a Russian. Maybe I’m wrong.

Jan Peerce: I believe he grew up with Yiddish and English, and he recorded a lot of Yiddish.

Richard Tucker: Ditto.

Tom Krause: I have never seen it mentioned, but his Swedish sounds native to me. His Finnish sounds great too, but my Finnish is not great, so I can’t be positive.

Celestino Sarobe: Recorded extensively in Basque, and I know the Spanish is native.

Andrés de Segurola: Spanish, and the Catalan sounds good to me.

Anatolij Solov’janenko: Sounds native in Ukrainian and Russian to me.

Rosa Raisa: Her Yiddish is probably native, and I’m not sure how to count her Italian.

Ara Berberian: English and Armenian. I don’t speak a word of Armenian, so I can’t be sure his level is native-like.

Montserrat Caballé: Catalan and Spanish.

José Carreras: Catalan and Spanish.

Maria Callas: Greek and English, I think, though I’ve heard from Greeks that her accent in Greek was Italian, and that she spoke bad Greek when she first came to Greece. So maybe not.

Bonus non-classical: Robert Goulet spoke French, and Jimmy Roselli Neapolitan.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Callas also spoke French and Italian and got better at Greek, living there for a few years (during the war). She spoke Veronese Italian for a while.

Carreras spoke Italian like a native.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

MAS said:


> Callas also spoke French and Italian and got better at Greek, living there for a few years (during the war). She spoke Veronese Italian for a while.
> 
> Carreras spoke Italian like a native.


Yes, most opera singers speak multiple languages. This is expressly not the point of the thread.


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

> Nicolai Gedda: Swedish and Russian, reportedly. Honestly, though, his Russian to me sounds more like that of someone who knows the language really well than that of a Russian. Maybe I’m wrong.


Gedda's stepmother was Swedish and his stepfather Russian, so he grew up speaking both at home. His family also lived in Germany starting when he was 4. I don't know exactly what it takes to be native, but my memory from his autobiography was that he eventually felt equally comfortable in all three while still a child.


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## Monsalvat (11 mo ago)

PaulFranz said:


> Yes, most opera singers speak multiple languages. This is expressly not the point of the thread.


Well, what _is_ the point of the thread? If you can speak multiple languages, then you are bilingual. You may have an accent or slightly unnatural syntax if you didn't learn a particular language until you were older, but you are still bilingual. Is this what you mean by “true bilingual?” Someone who “lived in Germany as an adult and speaks fluent German” _is_ truly bilingual, and someone who “sounded good in multiple languages” but never learned them is not bilingual. Also, what do you mean by “capital letters included for skimmers?” I’m just trying to figure out what you mean; are you looking for singers who have a totally natural accent due to having learned multiple languages at a young age? i.e. it sounds like more than just fluency but actual mother tongue? Or am I not understanding you? Sorry!


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Helen Traubel grew up in a German community in Missouri and was bilingual from her youth.


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## ewilkros (8 mo ago)

Vanni-Marcoux, exemplary French tenor-y lyric bass, had a French father and an Italian mother. He was born Jean [something] Marcoux, but his mother called him Vanni, short for Giovanni. As a singer he was first billed as Vanni Marcoux, but that morphed into Vanni-Marcoux, following a French predeliction for single-name celebrities. His French was considered a model for pronunciation and projection of that language, but his Italian was just fine as well. He was a long-time member of the Chicago Opera in Mary Garden's day. Garden--who for her part always sang French with a bit of Scotch burr--insisted on her doing several Italian roles in French, but the rest of the cast, including Vanni-Marcoux, would sing the original Italian, leading to situations like:

Tosca: Ah, Dieu! --Combien?
Scarpia: "Quanto"??
Tosca: Le prix!
Scarpia: Già! mi dicon venal..., etc











****
Nelson Eddy had nearly perfect Russian, to go by the movie Balalaika and various bits that have washed up from his radio shows, but darned if I know if he had any fluency in spoken Russian. His biography shows no genetic ties to Russia, though I think he might have barnstormed with one or more of Vladimir Rosing's opera companies in the 1920's.

Leonard Warren's parents were both Jewish/Russian immigrants to the US and I think I have heard that he could speak Russian, but I don't know that he ever sang in the language, even on his Russian tour in the 1950's.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Asmik Grigorian has Estonian mother and Armenian father. Both were Soviet opera singers. I can't know it exactly, but their common language is probably Russian. 
Marina Rebeka is Latvian, but her father has Belorussian origin (and a real surname is Rebeko), and she speaks Russian like everyone who was born in USSR until it's split.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

ewilkros said:


> Vanni-Marcoux, exemplary French tenor-y lyric bass, had a French father and an Italian mother. He was born Jean [something] Marcoux, but his mother called him Vanni, short for Giovanni. As a singer he was first billed as Vanni Marcoux, but that morphed into Vanni-Marcoux, following a French predeliction for single-name celebrities. His French was considered a model for pronunciation and projection of that language, but his Italian was just fine as well. He was a long-time member of the Chicago Opera in Mary Garden's day. Garden--who for her part always sang French with a bit of Scotch burr--insisted on her doing several Italian roles in French, but the rest of the cast, including Vanni-Marcoux, would sing the original Italian, leading to situations like:
> 
> Tosca: Ah, Dieu! --Combien?
> Scarpia: "Quanto"??
> ...


Marcoux had a distinct French accent in his Italian, and Nelson Eddy most certainly did not speak Russian.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Helen Traubel grew up in a German community in Missouri and was bilingual from her youth.


Fascinating!


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Monsalvat said:


> Well, what _is_ the point of the thread? If you can speak multiple languages, then you are bilingual. You may have an accent or slightly unnatural syntax if you didn't learn a particular language until you were older, but you are still bilingual. Is this what you mean by “true bilingual?” Someone who “lived in Germany as an adult and speaks fluent German” _is_ truly bilingual, and someone who “sounded good in multiple languages” but never learned them is not bilingual. Also, what do you mean by “capital letters included for skimmers?” I’m just trying to figure out what you mean; are you looking for singers who have a totally natural accent due to having learned multiple languages at a young age? i.e. it sounds like more than just fluency but actual mother tongue? Or am I not understanding you? Sorry!


I said exactly what I meant in my first post, in the very first sentence. I guess you don't approve, but stop pretending that it's somehow hard to understand.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

vivalagentenuova said:


> Gedda's stepmother was Swedish and his stepfather Russian, so he grew up speaking both at home. His family also lived in Germany starting when he was 4. I don't know exactly what it takes to be native, but my memory from his autobiography was that he eventually felt equally comfortable in all three while still a child.


Yeah, I've read that too, and it's very hard to tell from song recordings, but I learned many years ago never to trust people saying that they are fluent/native-like in a language without evidence, especially when it comes to minority or non-local languages. It's like the people on the Internet who talk about their five-octave range. It's much better to hear the evidence than to be told about it. I do hear some things in his Russian that give me pause, but I am not a native Russian speaker myself, so I can't be sure. And having even two parents who speak a non-local language is often not enough for lifelong fluency in the children, and the father is the less likely parent to pass a language down.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

PaulFranz said:


> I said exactly what I meant in my first post, in the very first sentence. I guess you don't approve, but stop pretending that it's somehow hard to understand.


If you had read his post, you should understand that he was asking why (i.e. the point) you wanted to know, what does it accomplish by knowing such a very specific question.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

I think bilingual is a child who is brought up in an environment where more than one language is used. So when he or she begins speaking, both languages are used. In most cases we couldn't know it exactly, which language was used at home, whether any language, be it official state language or parents' native language, were studied later.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I don't know whether Callas's Greek was good, but her English was a teensy weensy bit peculiar at times (but she did not have the "Brooklyn accent" sometimes attributed to her). I get the feeling that she tried to distance herself from the speech of her childhood and evolved an accent all her own which she felt was more cosmopolitan and dignified, but which nonetheless showed its American origin. I can sympathize; I quite consciously, but naturally, outgrew the south Jersey accent of my parents and now speak an English so cleansed of regionalisms that only Enry Iggins would guess from whence I came. I hope you all like the way I talk.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I don't know whether Callas's Greek was good, but her English was a teensy weensy bit peculiar at times (but she did not have the "Brooklyn accent" sometimes attributed to her). I get the feeling that she tried to distance herself from the speech of her childhood and evolved an accent all her own which she felt was more cosmopolitan and dignified, but which nonetheless showed its American origin. I can sympathize; I quite consciously, but naturally, outgrew the south Jersey accent of my parents and now speak an English so cleansed of regionalisms that only Enry Iggins would guess from whence I came. I hope you all like the way I talk.


Callas's accent in English seemed to move around depending on where she was being interviewed. She seemed to adopt a more refined pronunciation when being interviewed in England. I do know she once said, in an interview for Greek radio in 1957, 

“I belong first and foremost to the Greek people. I am married to an Italian, the whole world praises me, but my blood is Greek, and no one can nullify that.”


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Incidentally I was brought up by a first generation Greek mother (ie born and lived in Greece until she married) and an English father, who hailed from the North East of England. My English relations all had heavy North Eastern accents, though my father's was less pronounced, probably due to the fact that he had been a captain in the army during the second world war. We, my brother and I, were brought up in the North East of England. My mother spoke with a Greek accent till the day she died, but didn't speak Greek at home, so my brother and I never learned Greek. My brother has a slight regional accent, but I have hardly any and speak what is usually considered "received pronunciation" or BBC English. Though moving to London and going to drama college down here no doubt contributed to the ironing out of my regional accent, I apparently spoke clear, unaccented English from an early age.


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## niknik (Oct 4, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I don't know whether Callas's Greek was good, but her English was a teensy weensy bit peculiar at times (but she did not have the "Brooklyn accent" sometimes attributed to her). I get the feeling that she tried to distance herself from the speech of her childhood and evolved an accent all her own which she felt was more cosmopolitan and dignified, but which nonetheless showed its American origin. I can sympathize; I quite consciously, but naturally, outgrew the south Jersey accent of my parents and now speak an English so cleansed of regionalisms that only Enry Iggins would guess from whence I came. I hope you all like the way I talk.


Ηer Greek accent, listening to her interview on Greek radio in 1957 on the eve of her famous recital at Herodus Atticus - ancient theatre on the outskirts of the Parthenon -, had an American tinge with several grammatical errors


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

I was born and grown up in the South of Russia, people speak with strong regional accent there. But when I lived there I was often told that my accent wasn't similar to local one. It also changed a little when I studied every new foreign language. 
I've moved to Saint Petersburg long ago, and of course my speech differs from local (in Petersburg there is a peculiar vocabulary rather than pronounce, unlike Moscow). But my accent changes during my life and turns to a mixed one, neither southern nor Moscow or Petersburg.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Tsaraslondon said:


> Incidentally I was brought up by a first generation Greek mother (ie born and lived in Greece until she married) and an English father, who hailed from the North East of England. My English relations all had heavy North Eastern accents, though my father's was less pronounced, probably due to the fact that he had been a captain in the army during the second world war. We, my brother and I, were brought up in the North East of England. My mother spoke with a Greek accent till the day she died, but didn't speak Greek at home, so my brother and I never learned Greek. My brother has a slight regional accent, but I have hardly any and speak what is usually considered "received pronunciation" or BBC English. Though moving to London and going to drama college down here no doubt contributed to the ironing out of my regional accent, I apparently spoke clear, unaccented English from an early age.


Tsaraslondon, do you speak Greek now?


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> I don't know whether Callas's Greek was good, but her English was a teensy weensy bit peculiar at times (but she did not have the "Brooklyn accent" sometimes attributed to her). I get the feeling that she tried to distance herself from the speech of her childhood and evolved an accent all her own which she felt was more cosmopolitan and dignified, but which nonetheless showed its American origin. I can sympathize; I quite consciously, but naturally, outgrew the south Jersey accent of my parents and now speak an English so cleansed of regionalisms that only Enry Iggins would guess from whence I came. I hope you all like the way I talk.



Yeah, she spoke the old-school East-Coast elite accent, often confusingly labeled the Transatlantic accent, at least when in public. Kind of a shame that speech style disappeared, but you hear it in lots of old recordings. Nan Merriman had it, too.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

ColdGenius said:


> I was born and grown up in the South of Russia, people speak with strong regional accent there. But when I lived there I was often told that my accent wasn't similar to local one. It also changed a little when I studied every new foreign language.
> I've moved to Saint Petersburg long ago, and of course my speech differs from local (in Petersburg there is a peculiar vocabulary rather than pronounce, unlike Moscow). But my accent changes during my life and turns to a mixed one, neither southern nor Moscow or Petersburg.


I'm interested in learning more about these regional accents. When I lived in Russia, I (alongside many others) was amazed at the lack of dialectal diversity in Russian speakers. I couldn't tell the difference between someone from Moscow and someone from Vladivostok. I know about the old Moscow and old Petersburg accents, but I never actually heard them in anyone under 70. Of course, the Southwestern area and Ukraine were obvious because of the g's, and Belarus often had that Trasianka influence.

In the South, I only noticed accents in the Caucasians, and only when they'd grown up speaking different languages, especially Chechen and Ingush, though even then it wasn't always there.

So what have I been missing? What kind of regional accents are obvious to Russians?


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

ColdGenius said:


> Tsaraslondon, do you speak Greek now?


 I'm ashamed to say, no.


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

Italian Americans who recorded in Italian and at least the occasional song in English: Rosa Ponselle, Dusolina Giannini, Anna Moffo. I don't think I've heard anything in English by Lina Pagliughi?

Would Giuseppe di Stefano belong in that list of Neapolitan and Italian? His family moved north when he was young.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

Revitalized Classics said:


> Italian Americans who recorded in Italian and at least the occasional song in English: Rosa Ponselle, Dusolina Giannini, Anna Moffo. I don't think I've heard anything in English by Lina Pagliughi?
> 
> Would Giuseppe di Stefano belong in that list of Neapolitan and Italian? His family moved north when he was young.


No, his Neapolitan was horrible. Like, he just sang it as if it were misspelled Italian.

The Ponselles' relatives were from Neapolitan-speaking areas, and they definitely could not pronounce correct Neapolitan, so I wonder whether there was any minority-language transmission at home.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

PaulFranz said:


> I'm interested in learning more about these regional accents. When I lived in Russia, I (alongside many others) was amazed at the lack of dialectal diversity in Russian speakers. I couldn't tell the difference between someone from Moscow and someone from Vladivostok. I know about the old Moscow and old Petersburg accents, but I never actually heard them in anyone under 70. Of course, the Southwestern area and Ukraine were obvious because of the g's, and Belarus often had that Trasianka influence.
> 
> In the South, I only noticed accents in the Caucasians, and only when they'd grown up speaking different languages, especially Chechen and Ingush, though even then it wasn't always there.
> 
> So what have I been missing? What kind of regional accents are obvious to Russians?


You've noticed basic tendencies. Moscow, or more exactly, old Moscow accent is characteristic. It used to be a standard of pronounce, at least one of my teachers told so. But it easily becomes exaggerated and evokes a smile in the rest of a country. They draw out stressed vowels and swallow unstressed ones. 
In Petersburg there are some specialities in using of words or their forms, especially deminutives. 
These are big cities, many inhabitants have come from other places all over the country, so distinctions are often blurred. In Siberia and Far East, as I could notice, the difference is in use of words and idioms. The dialects are most characteristic in some rural regions. 
As you've noticed, the key speciality of Southwest is fricative G (like Latin H, but more voiced; sounds pretty vulgar, but sometimes nice), one of results of mutual influence with Ukrainian. 
Another regional dialect is at the Volga river. There unstressed O-s are pronounced. 
Of course, there are also many professional jargons.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

ColdGenius said:


> You've noticed basic tendencies. Moscow, or more exactly, old Moscow accent is characteristic. It used to be a standard of pronounce, at least one of my teachers told so. But it easily becomes exaggerated and evokes a smile in the rest of a country. They draw out stressed vowels and swallow unstressed ones.
> In Petersburg there are some specialities in using of words or their forms, especially deminutives.
> These are big cities, many inhabitants have come from other places all over the country, so distinctions are often blurred. In Siberia and Far East, as I could notice, the difference is in use of words and idioms. The dialects are most characteristic in some rural regions.
> As you've noticed, the key speciality of Southwest is fricative G (like Latin H, but more voiced; sounds pretty vulgar, but sometimes nice), one of results of mutual influence with Ukrainian.
> ...



While I have you here...what do you think of Gedda's Russian? Does he sound like a Russian to you?


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Revitalized Classics said:


> Italian Americans who recorded in Italian and at least the occasional song in English: Rosa Ponselle, Dusolina Giannini, Anna Moffo. I don't think I've heard anything in English by Lina Pagliughi?
> 
> Would Giuseppe di Stefano belong in that list of Neapolitan and Italian? His family moved north when he was young.


Di Stefano was Sicilian.


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## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

PaulFranz said:


> While I have you here...what do you think of Gedda's Russian? Does he sound like a Russian to you?


His singing Russian is wonderful, as his diction. The accent is present, but very light, in several words. 
It doesn't mean, nevertheless, that he spoke Russian as clear as he sang. Russian who live abroad for a long time or have grown up there always speak with an accent or at least their speaking, choice of words, phrase structure differs from native speakers. 
Georg Ots is an interesting example too. He was Estonian, though he was born in Saint-Petersburg (then Petrograd) he grew up in Tallinn. He spoke Russian with an accent, but it wasn't observable when he sang. 
P. S. The best Russian I ever heard from foreigners was not in the opera. Italian guides speak fluently and clearly, only a vocabulary betrays them.


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## PaulFranz (May 7, 2019)

ColdGenius said:


> His singing Russian is wonderful, as his diction. The accent is present, but very light, in several words.
> It doesn't mean, nevertheless, that he spoke Russian as clear as he sang. Russian who live abroad for a long time or have grown up there always speak with an accent or at least their speaking, choice of words, phrase structure differs from native speakers.
> Georg Ots is an interesting example too. He was Estonian, though he was born in Saint-Petersburg (then Petrograd) he grew up in Tallinn. He spoke Russian with an accent, but it wasn't observable when he sang.
> P. S. The best Russian I ever heard from foreigners was not in the opera. Italian guides speak fluently and clearly, only a vocabulary betrays them.


Yeah, another great Baltic singer, Janis Zabers, had great Russian for a foreigner when he sang, but I could hear that occasionally there were some words where he just didn't palatalize. "Ждешь ли ты мэня..."


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