The adventures of Miss Despina

Oh dear, I have so much to do this week! I have presentations to write for oral exams in French (Wednesday) and Italian (Friday), and a concert on Saturday - which I will be more excited about once I’m certain of my words. Add to this that my boyfriend is in hospital having his wisdom teeth out on Tuesday and that work are being utterly arsey with me at the moment, and you can see why my stress levels might be a bit higher than average this week.

Someone (at work, I think) has robbed my notebook I had all my Czech learning in and so I need to start that again. I’m learning it through a book and CD set, and believe myself to be quite quick on the uptake, considering just how different the language is from anything I’ve studied before. I’ll explain the details later on, but basically I’m learning Czech because I’m living in Prague from May until September, and while I know that I could get along just speaking English, I want at least to be able to make an effort. As you can imagine, I’m enjoying it. So far I can introduce myself and be nice to people, which is a good place to start I suppose. And I can say that my throat hurts - essential for any singer!

This week will probably see me blogging loads in the name of procrastination!

My degree course has nothing to do with languages. It’s Information and Library Management, which people who know me well find pretty funny. It’s not what I thought I’d end up studying, but I’m generally happy with it and I graduate in just over a year’s time. This year I’m doing Italian as one of my six modules.

I am fortunate to have many things in my life about which I can say I am truly passionate - singing and languages are two of these things, and are interwoven. I think that through opera, I’ve fallen in love with the Italian language. I love it because the sounds are so pure and unambiguous, none of this dipthong drivel. Saying even the most simple words feels quite delicious, and whenever I speak Italian, I feel so sexy, even sexier than when I speak French. Which is also damn sexy. I’ve been studying French since secondary school. I had a couple of years away from studying anything (which will henceforth be known as "The Dark Ages") and am so glad I began French again at university. It doesn’t even count towards my degree and until my kindly Dean of Faculty stepped in I was paying for it myself. The fact that my French is at a good level means that I find it easier to learn Italian from French, as the grammar has many very similar features.

As a singer, I love that now when I sing an aria such as "Lascia ch’io pianga" I understand the text without having to rely on a naff translation (they are nearly always naff). I connect better with what I’m singing about. When I get back to the French art songs (the Debussy, Fauré, and co) I’ll be able to address the problem of the difficult balance between sounding like Piaf and sounding like a Verdi soprano. This is a difficult balance to strike and I’ll probably be blogging about it sometime. The Italian song repertoire (in particular the 24 arie antiche) is to singers what the Chopin nocturnes are to pianists. It’s also useful to have other languages because if I am a lucky girl and international opportunities come up for me, either in the music or the library profession, I’ll be able to take them.

Learning languages makes you feel good. If you go to a class every week, you learn something new every week - what could be better for your self-esteem than that?

Friday morning began with an Italian exam. It was beginner level, as I’ve only been studying the language since October, but considering that December’s exam was about cosmetic surgery and pasta exports, I found the generic "Write a letter - nay, an email! - to your Italian friend" topic utterly unchallenging. Which, on the plus side, probably means I did quite well. I love Italian, when I’m a bit better I’ll blog for you in Italian.

So I did the exam in half an hour and went for a celebratory lunch for the fabulous Sara, Sue, and Alison (feeling rather Sex And The City-esque). We walked up to St Peter’s Square and had an Italian meal, which I, just to make a point, ordered in my best Mancunian accent. Traditionally we go for an all-you-can-eat-for-a-fiver to celebrate the end of term. However, we pushed the boat out this time because had wonderful things to celebrate on Friday - Sara is getting married on April 6th! It will be a fairytale wedding, predominantly purple in colour, in a castle in Scotland. She is very excited about this!

Then in the evening, my boyfriend took me out to a new Thai restaurant within easy walking distance of our house - bonus! The other bonus is that the food was lovely, and the ambiance just right. We went through a phase of being plagued by appalling music in restaurants, including one in Chinatown playing the stuff I was disco-ing to in secondary school in 19**. (And we all know that memories of school discos are enough to put anyone off their food!) But yes, the Thai was great. Then we got the tram into town and went to Matt & Phred’s, where the act was quite traditional but really sharp and imaginative and great! I swear the trombonist / singer was about my dad’s age. However I had to go home relatively early and put myself to bed because I was working on Saturday, and doing it twice in one day can be exhausting!