Castilian Spanish is our focus this week, with Basque soprano Vanessa Goikoetxea. Our texts for today are the Zarzuela tenor aria "No puede ser" and the Obradors song "Al amor". This time we are concentrating on the S, C and Z, and the LL in Castilian Spanish.

The text for "No puede ser" can be found here, as well as a brief history of Zarzuela and a short biography of the composer, Pablo Sorozábal. The text to "Al amor" can be found at the Lied and Art Song Texts Page, and I found the original Catullus poem that it's based on, as well as a blog in Spanish that compares the two poems, and includes another modern translation of the Latin.

The Basque language (Euskera) pre-dates Indo-European languages, and is considered a language isolate, since it has no grammatic connection to the languages that surround it. The Basque composer Vanessa mentioned were Jesús Guridi and Aita Donostia, and I found a few Youtube clips for both of them: the Finale of El Caserio and the song Alla arriba en equella montana by Guridi and choral pieces Adios Ene Maitea for men's choir and Agur Maria for women's choir by Donostia.

As always, please feel free to contact me with and questions or comments here, on the Facebook page, or directly at ellen@ellenrissinger.com