Opera vs. Song - Poulenc's Song-Cycle: Tel Jour Tel Nuit

Opera Singers deliver simple messages with strength; Lieder Singers deliver complex messages with depth and subtlety. No offense to either group.

Studying Francis Poulenc's cycle 'Tel Jour Tel Nuit', words by Paul Éluard, I realised that there are 5 steps for the singer to prepare themselves:

 1) Familiarise oneself, immerse oneself in the text (pronunciation and meaning);
 2) Familiarise oneself with Poulenc's music;
 3) Putting text and music together, divine the composer's interpretation of the text;
 4) Work out one's reaction to said interpretation, and divine one's own interpretation;
 5) Work at the technical delivery of the song.

As they say, "Rinse and Repeat". That is, have a go, perform it; then, do it again, steps 1-5.

I was working from Pierre Bernac's "Interpretation of French Chanson", which has copious literal translations, and which helped greatly, but it was necessary to use a dictionary to see what the original meanings of the words were at times.

I also determined the following rule for "in" at the start of a word, which had been bothering me for decades. Fortunately, it is quite simple. "IN" + vowel, or "IN" + "N" = "i", otherwise = "ĩ" nasalised. So Inutile or Invocation. (Same with IM: Immoralité or Important.)