German for Singers Program Featured on NPR
A unique summer language course in Vermont opens the door to opera singing in Germany. At Vermont’s famed Middlebury Language Schools, opera singers perfect their German — right down to mastering the elusive umlaut.
Article originally published by National Public Radio | August 17, 2025
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AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
If you want to make a career as an opera singer, Germany, with 80 opera houses, is one of the best places to go. While mastering the German language can be tricky, a unique course at Middlebury College is designed to help. Vermont Public’s Nina Keck has more.
NINA KECK, BYLINE: On a recent Friday, Stefan Rutter and eight students rehearse in a dark campus theater.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in German).
KECK: Rutter is music director for Middlebury’s German for Singers Program. He listens intently as students rehearse an opera by Mozart.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in German).
STEFAN RUTTER: (Speaking German).
KECK: “That’s great,” he tells them, but then he digs into it word by word. They sing it through another four times before he has them read the lyrics without singing to fine-tune their diction even more.
RUTTER: (Speaking German).
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Speaking German).
RUTTER: (Speaking German).
KECK: Umlauts - those two dots over German vowels are what he’s talking about. They’re tricky for those who aren’t fluent in German.
RUTTER: The difference between the oh (ph) and the ooh (ph) because they feel similar to them, but for Germans, they’re very different.
KECK: Total language immersion is one way Middlebury tries to break through. Participants sign a pledge to speak nothing but German for the entire seven-week course.
ASHLEY SCHUSSELBERG: The first week, I think, was just panic.
KECK: Twenty-one-year-old Ashley Schusselberg is a soprano from Long Island. She and Orlando Montalvo, a 28-year-old tenor from Providence, Rhode Island, admit the program is intense, but the immersion works.
ORLANDO MONTALVO: You know, we have class for, like, two hours a day, and then we have to eat lunch together in German. We are, you know, going to the bathroom in German. We’re doing everything that we can in German. And I came in here blindsided. And I was, like, oh, wow, I actually can speak and defend myself in German now.
KECK: And, no, they’re not cheating. The students were given special dispensation to speak with NPR in English.
Hannah Friesen, a 30-year-old who sings professionally in New York, says her biggest hang-up with German are consonant clusters - the PFs and TCHs.
HANNAH FRIESEN: Yeah, I think Italian is the easiest because it’s more vowels than - I don’t know. I feel like German is more crunchy.
KECK: Crunchy to the tune of $12,000 for this class - something Friesen considers an investment. Program director Bettina Matthias says German grants and student aid mean most students pay less. But it’s a lot, she admits, which is why, in addition to history and culture lessons, she includes practical information about working in Germany.
BETTINA MATTHIAS: We talk about, what do you need to know to audition for an agent? What do you need to know to audition for an opera houses?
KECK: Like many in the class, Mitchell Widmer, a 32-year-old baritone from rural Iowa, wants to work in Germany.
MITCHELL WIDMER: At the end of the day, I know after this program that when I walk into an audition room with other Americans, or people from different countries than Germany, that my German is going to be so well-tuned that I will have an advantage.
KECK: Widmer and his classmates will get to try out their new and improved language skills in Germany this week. They’ll perform Mozart’s “The Pretend Garden-Girl” - “Die Verstellte Gartnerin.” Yeah, there’s an umlaut in there.
For NPR News, I’m Nina Keck in Chittenden, Vermont.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENTS: (Singing in German).
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Applications for our German for Singers, German Immersion, Master of Arts, Master in Applied Languages, and Master of Arts in Teaching with Licensure programs open November 3, 2025.
It’s really the only program of its kind. I’ve always loved learning languages, but making the jump from being able to read and write to being able to have a conversation is a really difficult thing to do without being forced to just dive in within a safe learning environment. I was an invaluable experience to learn how to manage the daily life of an opera singer in German, with all of the specific vocabulary and jargon that’s almost impossible to learn elsewhere. Jenna Lorusso, German for Singers Program
Connect with Jenna Lorusso or one of our other German for Singers ambassadors here.
