Switching lyrics to italic in the same syllabe

[Nils]

Questions over Questions:

I have lyrics here which need switching to italics during a syllabe. It the 
following example it is "phi" where the "i", and everything after, needs to be 
italic.

Se --  ra --  ph \override LyricText #'font-shape = #'italic i --  nen

If I do it like this the "i" moves to the next syllabe which is wrong.
When removing either the space after "ph" or before "i" I get errors.

[...]#'italic"i" --  nen does not work either.


Nils