Opera-what language to present It In

[lennygoran]

A friend from England sent me this article-I vote for original language and surtitles-for example I don't want to hear Aida sung in English especially since I can't even make out half the English words they're singing-even if the opera is originally composed with an English libretto I still want surtitles-anyway here's the article. Len


The article:

Critics who want operas sung in their original language are perpetuating “cultural elitism” to “keep the riff-raff away”, the English National Opera’s former music director has claimed.

Mark Wigglesworth, who quit the London Coliseum in 2016, warned of the “unspoken view” of some of those hoping to see performances such as La Bohème in Italian, claiming that they took pleasure in making it inaccessible.

Writing for Bachtrack, a classical music website, in response to a debate over ENO’s English-only policy, he said: “If the language policy is abandoned, it would [betray] the company’s mission to perform opera in a way that can be understood by the largest number of people.” He added: “A more unspoken view is one that thinks singing in a foreign language ‘keeps the riff-raff away’. ”

The claims come after the mezzo- soprano Dame Felicity Palmer told The Times last week that she did not agree with her former employer’s exclusive English-language policy.

Palmer said: “We worked on Verdi’s Forza at ENO and it did work in the end, but you just thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to get the lusciousness of the Italian?’ Sometimes you do need the colour. To have surtitles when they’re singing in English is nothing short of scandalous.”

[barney]

With you Len. Lost count of the number of ugly English translations I've heard, where the words don't follow the musical scan or are silly. Sing the language the composer wrote the opera for. Don't feel overly emphatic about this - an English libretto wouldn't stop me going - but that is my decided preference.

[lennygoran]

Barney thanks-you and I pretty much agree-now about Donizetti......Len

[John F]

Until the 1950s, nearly every opera company performed in the language of the country where it was based. The conspicuous exception was the Metropolitan Opera, and even the Met gave whole seasons in German and Italian before settling into the original language - when that language was Italian, German, or French - and even so, Rudolf Bing had some operas done in English, notably Russian, Czech, "Wozzeck," and even "La Boheme" for a season (alternating in Italian).

Wigglesworth's view aside, there's a practical reason for opera companies all over the world to use the original languages. If they don't, then singers are forced to learn new words for the operas they know. To complicate things further, there is no standard singing English translation for most operas, so a singer might have to learn one English version for the English National Opera and another for, say, the Kansas City Opera.

Obviously, the top singers aren't going to do that. This limits the companies that require it to younger singers who must take whatever work they can get, and older singers below the top level. Which the audiences at the great opera houses won't buy - literally.

Still, there is something amiss when a soprano from Pennsylvania and a bass from Kentucky must sing nearly everything in languages they don't understand any more than the audience does. In an ideal world we'd all be multilingual, but hardly any of us can understand more than one or two languages other than our own, if any at all. Singing in translation not only benefits the audience, it benefits the native speakers/singers of the language when they really understand what they're singing. Even if this involves the extra work of learning the translation a particular opera company uses.

[barney]

JohnF makes characteristically good points. But composers write for the flow and idiomatic use of the language of the libretto, and it is terribly hard to match all involved when transferring to another language. I have almost never heard an English translation that worked as well, and I've heard plenty. Surtitles are a great invention!
Len, I do love Donizetti. Just not quite as much as you. It was a great privilege to go to his tomb in northern Italy a few years ago.

[Modernistfan]

This is a perennial problem. I can see why it might be desirable to present operas live in the language of the audience, but, for recordings, I always look for recordings in the original language. The accents and rhythms of the language vary greatly, and the composer, in nearly all cases, wrote for one specific language. However, singing in the original language can be a real problem for composers such as Janacek, who wrote in Czech, a language barely spoken at all outside the Czech Republic (even Slovak, spoken in Slovakia, differs to some extent). For many years, the Janacek operas were performed in German using translations prepared by Max Brod, a close friend of Janacek who was bilingual in both Czech and German, but now virtually all opera houses perform those operas in the original.

[John F]

composers write for the flow and idiomatic use of the language of the libretto, and it is terribly hard to match all involved when transferring to another language.

That's a counsel of perfection which few composers have signed on to and few but connoisseurs can actually appreciate. Verdi composed "Les Vepres Siciliennes" and "Don Carlos" to French librettos but he approved the Italian translations with which they were published, and are almost always performed. Weber's "Oberon" was composed for Covent Garden with an English libretto, but it was widely performed during Weber's lifetime and published in a German translation which is always used today. One of the changes Wagner made in "Tannhäuser" for the Paris Opéra was to substitute a French text for his own German original.

Has any major composer objected to his operas being given in the language of the audience? (Other than Stravinsky with "Oedipus Rex.") Likewise most translations, certainly. But Andrew Porter's English Ring and other works show that it can be done well.

[lennygoran]

JohnF makes characteristically good points. But composers write for the flow and idiomatic use of the language of the libretto, and it is terribly hard to match all involved when transferring to another language. I have almost never heard an English translation that worked as well, and I've heard plenty. Surtitles are a great invention!
Len, I do love Donizetti. Just not quite as much as you. It was a great privilege to go to his tomb in northern Italy a few years ago.

Barney okay-great! Len

[John F]

One last comment. Naturally, composers set the words before them as well as they can. But I don't know of any who have given "the flow and idiomatic use of the language" priority over the audience (and singers!) being able to understand what the characters are saying. That's antidramatic, the equivalent of contemplating one's own navel.

Of course by now I know the words of many operas by heart, and can understand what the characters are saying as they say it. But this is the product of years of repeated listening. It's essential to the dramatic nature of opera that it be understood, maybe not perfectly but for the most part, the very first time. The audience must not be sent home baffled - unless, of course, that's the composer's intention.

in earlier years, before it became customary to turn off the lights in the auditorium, members of the audience would buy a libretto at the theatre and use it when they needed to, for example when an opera in Italian was being performed in Vienna. The 18th century equivalent of projected captions. I believe it was Wagner who introduced the darkened auditorium, at his Bayreuth festival plays. But he wrote his librettos in German for a German audience, nationalist that he was, and made no concession to the needs of foreigners besides selling them tickets.

[maestrob]

Just as an aside....

Eve Queler used to provide complete libretti to her audiences in Carnegie Hall when she would perform concert versions of rare operas. You could hear the rustle of pages turning every so often in the hall, as the listeners would follow the words dutifully! Very classy.

[THEHORN]

Nowadays, with supertitles and the Met's unique Met title system , the easy availability of librettos with translations in complete opera recordings and titles on DVDs etc , opera in the original language is no longer a problem .
And with major international opera companies in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Munich , Hamburg and elsewhere , where casts are so internationalized, it's just not feasible to expect Italian singers to learn the operas of Verdi, Puccini, Rossini and Donizetti et al in English, German singers to sing Wagner and Richard Strauss in English and French singers to sing French operas in the same language .
In the past, it was a good idea for smaller local companies to perform operas in the local language, but those days are long gone . I recall the late Regine Crespin singing in the Met's production of Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites " in English on WQXR many years ago . Her French accent, even though she was portraying a Frenchwoman, was very distracting . This made no sense whatsoever .

[John F]

In the past, it was a good idea for smaller local companies to perform operas in the local language

Not just smaller companies but the big ones too. The Vienna State Opera performed everything in German, including "Figaros Hochzeit" and "Don Juan"; the Paris Opéra, everything in French - I heard a French-language "Rigoletto" there in the mid-1960s; at La Scala, Toscanini conducted "I Maestri Cantori di Norimberga" and "La Valkyria," though in one season "Pelléas et Mélisande" was uniquely sung in French; at the Bolshoi Theater, everything was sung in Russian, no matter what; and Covent Garden got Kirsten Flagstad and Hans Hotter to learn "The Valkyrie" in English. (She asked him why he wanted that opera done in English; surprised, he replied that he had been told it was she who wanted it.) Opera in the original languages only began at those houses in the 1950s and 1960s. The Met was the exception, since it imported foreign opera stars instead of relying on the local products as the other major and minor companies mostly did.

[Lance]

I'm all for original languages ... it fits the music as intended. I have no problem with translations showing so viewers can follow the plot. I have an RCA LP recording of Bizet's Carmen excerpts sung in German with Christa Ludwig as I recall. It did not make an impression.