Uta Simone
Lecturer for Diction and Voice Training
simone@mdw.ac.at
Diction and voice training for opera singers
The human voice is a medium for our thoughts and stories, which we convey to our audience in spoken or sung form.
In musical theatre, the music provides clear guidelines for the sung word: rhythm, pitch, tempo and phrasing are fixed. This creates a tension between personal interpretation and musical-technical requirements. This presents a key challenge: how can a text be conveyed in such a way that it remains understandable despite musical transformation and unfolds its effect in terms of content?
The spoken word has a dramaturgical function in musical theatre: it drives the plot forward, explains situations, leads from one musical passage to the next or deliberately breaks it. Here, we decide for ourselves on the rhythm and dynamics, tempo and intonation, in order to shape a text in such a way that it is in harmony with the overall composition, the action on stage, the director's concept, our role and our personality. This requires both a precise analysis of the text in order to understand its content and an honest examination of our own experiences and thoughts.
In addition to interpretation, I work with singers on elocution so that their speaking voice is strong and appropriate to the situation, can be heard in the room and can stand alongside the singing. In this way, singing can be perceived as exaggerated speech, or speech as an extension of singing and not, as I unfortunately so often experience, as a strain on the singing voice.
In order to make singing and speaking a harmonious whole, individual lessons in "speech training" and "speech formation" are based on the song, opera or operetta repertoire that is worked on in singing lessons or required for musical theatre productions at the mdw. In addition, we deal intensively with German poetry, dialogues and monologues. My areas of focus include the precise articulation of high German – with particular attention to consonants – voice projection over various distances, and impulse- and reaction-controlled speech.
After studying singing at the Berlin University of the Arts, I was a soprano in permanent engagement at the Mittelsächsisches Theater Freiberg and the Theater Plauen-Zwickau from 2000 to 2013. I performed in up to 100 shows a year and had the opportunity to play over 40 roles during this time. I found the transition between sung and spoken words in opera, operetta and musicals to be a particular challenge and, at the same time, a great enrichment. On stage, I discovered my love for the spoken word.
Until 2023, I worked as a freelance singer, devoting myself in particular to song and the juxtaposition of spoken and sung poetry. In 2013, I completed training as a voice artist at the Coaching Company in Berlin. Since 2015, I have been working as a voice artist for audiobooks, documentaries and radio features. I regularly record audiobooks for renowned publishers such as Piper, Aufbau Verlag, Thalia and Penguin Verlag.
From 2016 to 2022, I was a lecturer at the Dresden University of Music Carl Maria von Weber for the subject "Stage Speech for Opera Singers" in 2021/2022 I was a guest lecturer at the University of Tübingen's Institute of Media Studies for "Audiobook Narration and Radio Plays", and in 2022 I was a lecturer at the same institute for "Audiobook and Microphone Narration". Since October 2022, I have been teaching ‘Speech Training’ and ‘Speech Formation’ as a senior lecturer at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna at the Department of Voice and Musical Theatre. Uta Simone 2025
uta-simone.de
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)-05.02.2026