Nico Castel: Met diction coach, tenor and creator of the IPA libretti series

Nico Castel sang as a comprimario tenor, then from 1979 prepared the Metropolitan Opera’s singers in their languages¹. This page gives the outline of his career in order; more guides to translated texts are in the libretti section.

Early life and training

Castel was born in Portugal and raised in Venezuela by multilingual parents and a German nanny¹. He attended a French school in Caracas¹.

At 16 he moved to the United States to sing and to study romance languages at Temple University¹. In the early 1950s he served in the United States Army as a translator in Germany¹. In 1958 he became the first winner of the “Joy in Singing” award, which launched his career with a recital at The Town Hall in New York City^1,3.

Singing career and the Met

Castel sang as a comprimario tenor, a singer of supporting character roles, and he had a vast repertoire of them^1,4. He had over 200 operatic roles in his repertoire¹. He was also a gifted linguist⁴.

In June 1958 he made his debut with Santa Fe Opera as Fenton¹. In 1965 he first sang with the New York City Opera, as Jacob Glock in The Flaming Angel¹. Among his recordings are Manon and The Tales of Hoffmann, the latter with Sills and Norman Treigle¹.

He made his Met debut on March 30, 1970, as Don Basilio in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and he performed with the company until 1997, toward the end singing speaking roles such as Pasha Selim². In all he gave nearly 800 performances there¹. Reviewers praised his rich dramatic characterizations, his sensitive musicianship and his impeccable diction².

Away from the stage he was also a recitalist, translator, cantor and whisky importer².

Diction coach at the Metropolitan Opera

Castel was the Met’s staff diction coach from 1979 until his retirement in 2009¹. The New York Times called him the Henry Higgins of the Metropolitan Opera². In 1985 Will Crutchfield, writing in the same paper, called him “the Metropolitan’s resident standard-setter for linguistic flavor”². As a coach he warned singers against “swarms of seething sibilants”².

He spoke English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian and Ladino with native or near-native fluency^1,2,3. Ladino, the language of Sephardic Jews, has its own page in the diction section.

The libretti series

Castel also translated opera libretti for singers. He published a vast series of French, German and Italian opera librettos, marking the pronunciation of every word with the International Phonetic Alphabet². Each carries phonetic pronunciation guides in the opera’s original language³. Singers, teachers and conservatories throughout North America and Europe use them¹.

He completed the operatic libretti of Giacomo Puccini, in two volumes, with the exception of Turandot⁵. Each line of the libretto is set three ways: the IPA spelling on the first line, the original Italian on the middle line, and a word-for-word English translation on the third⁵. Where a passage is hard to follow in the word-for-word translation, a fourth line gives a more literary translation⁵. Each volume includes synopses of the entire operas, vocal categories, cast names and translations of the stage directions⁵. The publisher is Leyerle Publications⁵.

Sherrill Milnes wrote the foreword to both volumes, and Marcie Stapp edited the Puccini set⁵. In his foreword to Volume II, Milnes writes that he looks forward to Castel’s Verdi and Mozart series⁵. The set is still in print: on 20 October 2026 Leyerle listed Volume I for sale at $99.00⁵. Turandot is not part of the Puccini set, and the listing seen on 20 October 2026 offers no Turandot volume⁵.

The other volumes

Puccini is one set among several. Leyerle published the complete librettos of Mozart, Verdi and Puccini plus three volumes of French opera librettos⁴. The libretti consist of word-by-word English translations and phonetic symbols for each word in the original language⁴. The series began with its first publication in late 1994⁶. The collection page, seen 20 October 2026, lists the German volume at $129.00⁷.

Ball State University Libraries shelves the series in its Music Reference collection and describes the contents as original texts, word-by-word translations and IPA transcriptions for entire libretti⁹. Singers and coaches know the books affectionately by a short name, the Nico books⁴. Browse the full list on the Leyerle opera libretti page⁷.

To learn how to use a libretto of this kind, read how to read a libretto. For the symbols themselves, see IPA for singers.

Other writing

Castel wrote A Singer’s Manual of Spanish Lyric Diction^1,3, published by Excalibur Press in New York¹. He also wrote a Ladino songbook, The Nico Castel Ladino Song Book, published by Tara Publications¹. Beyond those titles, he translated opera librettos prolifically and wrote manuals on diction for singers⁴. For the Spanish rules in a single page, see Spanish diction for singers.

Teaching

Castel taught at the Juilliard School, the Mannes College of Music, Queens College, Boston University and elsewhere². He joined Juilliard’s Vocal Arts faculty as a diction coach in 1989 and retired from Juilliard in 2014⁴.

With his third wife he taught on the faculty of the Spoleto Vocal Arts Symposium in Spoleto, Italy¹. The two also founded and ran the New York Opera Studio, a training forum for young singers^1,2. Castel presented the Nico Castel International Master Singer Competition every year; it accepted competitors up to age 40¹.

Death

Castel died on May 31, 2015, at his home in Manhattan. He was 83^2,4. He was an opera singer who became one of the world’s foremost diction coaches⁴.

Where his work shows up today

In the libretti, the IPA line sits above the original text with a word-for-word translation beneath it⁵. Read the pages on what a diction coach does and on transcribing an aria into IPA to see where that practice fits into a role preparation.