Marelene - What a woman!
She has incredible mystique, femininity, mystery,naughtiness, intrigue and yet despite all this, she projects honesty and decency. Renouncing her Nazi citizenship and moving to the USA in the early 30's. She went out on tour during WWII and played the USO sponsored events with Bob Hope and all the American patriots.
In her 1967 concert, she did all her talking to the audience in English and sang all her songs in English or French, except her very last song, which is Lilli Marlene, which Hats posted above. She apologized to the audience that she had to use German but said Lilli Marlene MUST be song only in German. There was tumultous applause and she gave us an encore, once again apologizing that the song had to be sung in German. The encore was one of her older big hits, "Johnny".
LANGUAGES USED FOR SONGS AND SPEECH
German, though guttural in speech, to me mellows out and is extremely lyrical and beautiful in song and poetry.
English,when sung in a slang manner is excellent in popular music but in opera or when translating German Lieder, it is very flat and banal.
Italian is the absolute most beautiful language for opera. I don't know about pop tunes but for light Classical, sung by Andrea Bocelli or the "Three tenors", it is the best language as well. Also in speech, Italian is great!
Spanish is beautiful in music and in speech but to me, it is not as beautiful as Italian, which is quite similar to it. Spanish excels in the rhythmic genre's originating in South America, it excels when used in Flamenco,salsa and all forms having a lot of rhythm.
French is beautiful in speech, also beautiful in opera but a little too syrup like for my tastes. French songs are at their best in sort of light classical such as Edith Piaf songs or going way back again, Maurice Chevalier. When they use French for American movies such as in Gigi's, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls", it is a bit too theedy weedy for me but in the opera Carmen by Bizet, only French will do.
OTHER LANGUAGES - I don't know much about the Eastern European languages. Czech sounds nice in speech, more mellow than Russian. Japanese is very much like fine poetry. The Japanese have imbued their tongue with spirituality. Western ears can't pick up any words but there is a nice spiritual flow to it. Hebrew is flowing and beautiful, both in speech and in song - quite similar to French in both regards but with less syrup.
ANCIENT LANGUAGES - Latin, similar to Italian but not a expressive in either speech or sound. Greek, speech sounds weird but most of the words are recognizable in English, the Greek songs I have heard in middle East restaurants showcase the language as excellent for singing.
I am no expert on this, does anyone with more background in it have much to say? Also, I have left out the too largest population groups, China and India. I know nothing about any of their many, many local languages.
Lakey
