Episode 64-17th Century French Diction

Olivier Bettens takes us through the pronunciation of French in the 17th Century with a scene from Armide. We talk about some exceptional words that are the same in modern pronunciation, alexandrines, the imperfect verb tense and a fifth nasal vowel. We got through as many rules as we could in the past 2 episodes, but there is a lot of information on this subject, so to find out more, check out Olivier's website, Chantez-vous francais? Armide was written by dramatist/librettist Philippe Quinault and composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Lully is considered the founder of French opera, even though he was born in Florence, Italy, and only moved to France when he was 14! Quinault was a playwrite, but in 1671 he contributed to a libretto that Lully set and from that point on only wrote libretti for Lully's works. The text for this episode is in a separate post. I'm leaving for the States tomorrow for a week, but I'll be back next Sunday and will post another episode shortly thereafter! In the meantime, please feel free to contact me here, at the Facebook page, on Twitter or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com NB: In this episode, I pronounced Lully's name incorrectly--the "p" in Jean-Baptiste should have been silent! I'll correct it for future downloads, but for people who downloaded it previously, make sure to take note and not follow my mistake. Many thanks to Jason Nedecky for noticing!