Question for Opera lovers

[PrincessMommy]

I've wondered this for a long time...

 

When/how was it decided that operas would only ever be sung in the original language?  Book and plays we translate.  Why don't they ever do Verdi in English or German?   When Shakespeare is performed in Berlin or Rome - is it always done in English?

 

Clearly I have too much time on my hands.  :laugh:

[LucyStoner]

Songs are harder than poems to satisfactorily translate.

 

I have not been to an opera house without supertitles and I have been to hundreds of operas in many different cities. Singing the supertitles instead of the original words would not be the same or as interesting. IMHO.

 

When English language operas are performed in non-English speaking countries, they are not translated. Also, most audience members benefit from supertitles even when watching an opera performed in their native language.

[PrincessMommy]

Songs are harder than poems to satisfactorily translate.

 

I have not been to an opera house without supertitles and I have been to hundreds of operas in many different cities. Singing the supertitles instead of the original words would not be the same or as interesting. IMHO.

 

When English language operas are performed in non-English speaking countries, they are not translated. Also, most audience members benefit from supertitles even when watching an opera performed in their native language.

 

I specifically asked about Shakespeare plays (not  English lang. operas) since that is probably the equivalent translation issues to opera.  I figured English operas were not translated since the reverse it true.

[LucyStoner]

I don't know about Shakespere translations though honestly there are many passages of Shakespere that I assume lose something when not in the original English. The flow and play on words.

 

I can't imagine how much less I would enjoy a Wagner opera sung in English or Franch rather than German or Rusalka in anything but Czech. The poems of Pablo Neruda lose something out of Spanish, though they are still good. But imagine stripping apart words that have been perfectly paired with music and slapping the music back together with a translation. Translating a novel or poem is very difficult. Translating an opera seems to make it that much harder. Also internationally renowned opera singers arrive at an opera house just a short time before opening night knowing their parts already. Imagine as a singer having to change your Tosca from Italian to French to English to German.

 

Again, unless you are really fluent as an opera singer or a very studied opera fan, most people need a libretto or superscript to get many of the words in an opera that is in their native language. I am an opera fan but not a musician at all and I always read the librettos in advance and unless I really know the opera prefer to sit where I can see the supertitles. I have stood though many operas though (that's how traveling on a shoestring kids see opera anyways). ;)

 

Take Barber's Vanessa, which is an American opera:

 

[CaffeineDiary]

Hi, following up on this.  I missed the thread when it first came up.

 

The assumption in OP's post isn't quite true.  Operas are usually sung in their native language because typically the music is crafted to match the rhythm of that language's natural speech.  But it's not universal.  Most operas have been performed in foreign (to the composer) languages at various times.  Off the top of my head:

 

Operas typically thought of as "children's" operas are often performed in English (when I say "english" feel free to substitute "in the language of the country they are being performed in").  Examples: The Magic Flute, Hansel and Gretel.

 

Operas that are more or less 'light' in nature are often played in translation.  I just saw an English version of La Fille Du Regiment last week, and The Merry Widow is often performed in English.

 

Nearly every Czech opera has been performed in English in England and the US - everything by JanáÄek, everything by Smetana.

 

All of Wagner's operas throughout the 20th century were commonly sung in Italian when performed in Italy.

 

This Christmas, the Met is doing a version of The Barber of Seville in English.

 

You bring up Verdi.  I'm not familiar with Verdi operas performed in English, but I bet they exist.  Verdi himself wrote a number of his operas to originally be performed in French, and later produced Italian versions (If I recall correctly, the opera we now call Don Carlo was originally the French Don Carlos.  Similarly, I'm positive he produced a version of Macbeth specifically in French.

 

I suspect much of the difference has to do with the original language.  English shares a lot of similarities with German, and it's pretty straightforward to translate a libretto from German to English and preserve the rhythm of the words.  But Italian opera with its many long-vowel melismas is trickier to bring to English.  And, let's face it, Italian opera is the best :-)

 

The last issue is that unlike in Italy, where opera is basically a popular and populist art form that anyone can enjoy - ​opera buffa basically descends from italian commedia dell'arte and childrens' puppet theater - in America it's loaded down with class signifiers of "sophistication", so lots of the people who pay too much money for tickets wants to keep the riff-raff out, and making sure it's not in English helps preserve it's elite status (and, not incidentally, helps keep it comparatively moribund as an art form here.)

 

[DragonFaerie]

OT: I have a friend who is a professional opera singer. It would be neat to know if any of you have ever seen him perform. He's a tenor, Emmanuel di Villarosa.

[regentrude]

Shakespeare is usually translated into the other language (except for very special performances where the whole point is to have it in the original).

Plays are different than operas - if you go see a play and do not understand the language, you get pretty much nothing out of it.

Now, there are very good Shakespeare translations who preserve much of the sound of the language, but yes, you lose - word play, which abounds in Shakespeare, is not translatable.

 

In opera, it is usually sufficient to read a translation or brief synopsis of the aria and get understanding and enjoyment out of an aria sung in the original. You should do this even if it's in your native language, because, let's face it, diction is very difficult and you often don't understand every word anyway.

The music is composed to work with the libretto and you can't just exchange the words and have it singable - the number of syllables, the kind of vowels and consonants that are in the word matter very much for the way it can be sung. Translating an opera usually compromises the music. Italian sings beautifully because of all the vowels.

[GailV]

Opera Theater St. Louis, which has an excellent reputation in U.S. Opera, performs all operas in English. We just saw the Barber of Seville in English last week.

I sat with a group of high school students, and felt like they were being exposed to a gateway drug given how much they enjoyed it -- laughing until crying. Many (most?) want to go see more opera now, and I'm guessing would enjoy the same opera more now if they saw in the original language. As a side note, we were so near the stage we were practically sitting on it, and much of the time I was unable to see the super scripts (which they still use) because I had to look up through the action on the stage and characters were in the way.

Okay, now off to look through our OTSL programs for the past couple of years to se if I've seen DragonFaerie's friend.

[GailV]

 

The last issue is that unlike in Italy, where opera is basically a popular and populist art form that anyone can enjoy - ​opera buffa basically descends from italian commedia dell'arte and childrens' puppet theater - in America it's loaded down with class signifiers of "sophistication", so lots of the people who pay too much money for tickets wants to keep the riff-raff out, and making sure it's not in English helps preserve it's elite status (and, not incidentally, helps keep it comparatively moribund as an art form here.)

 

 

I think this probably sums up why OTSL performs in English.  They're really trying to get the masses involved in opera. Among other programs for kids, they have a lively program for high school students -- kids can attend "Opera Camp" for a week for $170 (cheap for a daycamp around here) and that includes a ticket to the opera one night which this year was in a $75 seat.  They also have much cheaper seats, by the way, and you could see all of next season for $75 if you order the tickets now and are content sitting up in the back. They also have "Tweet Seats" for people in their 20s/30s to sit in and live tweet the experience (I'm pretty sure these are the very back row, as I noticed a bunch of phones in use during the overture and thought "what the heck is going on?" -- I found out later that it was a "Tweet Seat" night).

 

They're also big on casting young artists and performing new works.  

 

We may be a flyover area, but things are happening here in the arts.

[CaffeineDiary]

The music is composed to work with the libretto and you can't just exchange the words and have it singable - the number of syllables, the kind of vowels and consonants that are in the word matter very much for the way it can be sung. Translating an opera usually compromises the music. Italian sings beautifully because of all the vowels.

 

While I agree with the point you're making ("Translating poetry well is hard") I also think that it's not something we should fear.  Art is made to be changed, modified, hacked, transformed, and adapted to local tastes.  Opera suffers as an art form due to the cult of romantic personality that was largely promoted by Wagner and his disciples ("Treat it seriously!  Make no noise! Longer is better!"), and those of us who want the form to persist need to figure out ways to blast it out of its rut.  Supporting good translations of librettos is one of the best things I can think of to keep people interested.

 

To give an illustration of the point, the English version of The Magic Flute that is used by The Met is, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty terrible.  Compare and contrast to the absolutely awesome translation (by Stephen Fry (!!!)) made for Kenneth Brannagh's film version:

 

https://youtu.be/XT62KLvzGZU?t=30m15s

[chiguirre]

 

 

I saw The Magic Flute in English this year at Houston Grand Opera (probably the Met version because it wasn't very good). I think this opera in particular is translated because there are some spoken lines. Die Fledermaus was also performed in English, but it's more like a musical than an opera.

 

English National Opera translates all of their performances. It's their trademark.

 

I have seen Shakespeare performed in Spanish. It's not as good as it is in English.

 

ETA: I prefer supertitles to translations because it's hard to follow an aria in English. I don't know the words and the lines are more complex than a Broadway musical song would be.

 

HGO tries to be more interesting by offering at least one opera originally composed in English every year. They've done all of Britten's works over the last several years. They've also done mariachi operas. IME, the operas that sell out are the tried and true classics. Madame Butterfly and Carmen will sell out, Billy Budd won't.

[gardenmom5]

with music - you get the syllables WITH the notes - and that is very difficult to translate harmoniously, let alone still conveying the original thought.

 

we've an acquaintance whose dd mastered in voice.  she had to be fluent in FIVE languages. (at least she grew up bilingual with English and german.  then added Italian, French and Russian.)

 

if you think about it - those languages all have a unique "sound" that is part of the music of the opera.  that linguistic "sound" can't be translated.  if you were to hear someone speaking one of those languages, even if you couldn't understand what they were saying - chances are you would be able to tell *what* language they were speaking because each language is auditorily distinct.

 

it would be like taking an orchestral piece, and having it performed by a quintet. it can still sound nice, but you lose part of the music that gives it more depth.

[CaffeineDiary]

In terms of instrumental music, those are re-arranged for other instruments (or orchestra types) all the time. Bach's Toccata in Fugue in D Minor, for example, is written for solo organ, but many people have only heard it in the full-orchestra Leopold Stokowski arrangement from Fantasia.  And with opera specifically, the orchestra composition has changed over the years.  Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is typically today heard with an orchestra like this:

 

 

 

But in Mozart's time, the orchestra would have been much more modest, on fewer instruments with much less volume, more like this:

 

 

(Actually this is a tricky example because the recordings make these orchestras sound very similar - but in person, the first one would be about twice as loud.)

 

Again, I agree with your point that translating these things changes them.  But we shouldn't be afraid of changing art.  The original is still there.  If you have to choose between changing art or burying it, change it.

[catz]

Well, everyone has said why they don't really translate.

 

Our biggest opera in town does subtitles above the stage which is great.  We just saw Carmen there not too long ago and it was fantastic.

[regentrude]

While I agree with the point you're making ("Translating poetry well is hard") I also think that it's not something we should fear.  Art is made to be changed, modified, hacked, transformed, and adapted to local tastes.  Opera suffers as an art form due to the cult of romantic personality that was largely promoted by Wagner and his disciples ("Treat it seriously!  Make no noise! Longer is better!"), and those of us who want the form to persist need to figure out ways to blast it out of its rut.  Supporting good translations of librettos is one of the best things I can think of to keep people interested.

 

I don't understand why you respond this to my post since my point was not that translating poetry is hard - my point is that musically what works with an Italian text does not work vocally with an English text. If I need to sing a long melisma on a vowel, the word needs to have that vowel. This has nothing to do with fearing anything (I don't even know what that would mean in the context) but with the fact that you can't sing a long trill or melisma or sustained note on a consonant or a short word. English is not a very singable language. If you look at the development of vocal music in different countries you see that the characteristics of vocal music always reflect the characteristics of the language, the way phrases are shaped, for example. Faure needs to be sung in French, and Schuberts Lieder uniquely reflect the qualities of the German poetry.

 

I am all for providing a translation of the libretto to the audience - but that does not mean that singing the translation of the libretto makes sense for the singers.

[CaffeineDiary]

I don't understand why you respond this to my post since my point was not that translating poetry is hard - my point is that musically what works with an Italian text does not work vocally with an English text. If I need to sing a long melisma on a vowel, the word needs to have that vowel.

 

[elided]

 

I am all for providing a translation of the libretto to the audience - but that does not mean that singing the translation of the libretto makes sense for the singers.

 

While I agree with your statement that there is a technical challenge to be overcome, which I summarize as "translating poetry is hard", I disagree with what I read as your belief that the attempt shouldn't be made.  People translate Italian music to English all the time.  Many times it doesn't work.  Sometimes it does.  There's nothing sacrosanct about opera that should make us avoid the attempt any more than in any other art form.  The argument you make about Italian-to-English translation is equally true of translating German works - which tend to be multisyllabic, non-melismic, and rhythmic - to Italian, yet we have had an entire century of perfectly happy Italian opera-goers watching Die Walküre and other of Wagner's works in Italian.

 

 

 

Reading or listening to any work in translation is a question of trade-offs.  I agree with you that the trade-offs exist, but whether they're worth it have to be evaluated case by case.  As a general rule, I'm in favor of making any and all tradeoffs that make the form more approachable to the audience, and the desires of the singers rank pretty low on my list of priorities.

[regentrude]

 As a general rule, I'm in favor of making any and all tradeoffs that make the form more approachable to the audience, and the desires of the singers rank pretty low on my list of priorities.

 

I was not talking about the desires of the singers, but about the technicalities of voice.

I, as an audience member, want to hear the best singing. If a musical work is meant to be sung in Italian, it will never sound equally beautiful in English because the composer did not intend it to be sung in English and wrote it so that the music matches the Italian lyrics.

And Boris Godunov simply has to be in Russian to get the full effect.

 

ETA: It is interesting that is seems to be a uniquely American trend. In Europe, the trend is strongly towards performances in the original language.

[CaffeineDiary]

 

ETA: It is interesting that is seems to be a uniquely American trend. In Europe, the trend is strongly towards performances in the original language.

 

As was pointed out above, every opera the English National Opera performs is in English.  Here's their 2015/16 season:

 

Carmen

The Queen of Spades

The Pirates of Penzance

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

The Barber of Seville

La bohème

The Force of Destiny

The Mikado

The Magic Flute

Norma

Akhnaten

 

Pretty sure there are equivalent types of opera companies in France that perform all their (non-originally-French) operas in French - I know I've seen a performance of La Traviata on YouTube in French - but I don't know the specifics.

 

If one were to accept the thesis that operas are more often performed in English in America (I'm not sure I do, if we view it per-capita), then one might wonder why.  The rationale that would jump out at me is that most European opera houses are heavily State-subsidized, and tickets can be dirt, dirt, dirt cheap, whereas tickets to pretty much any medium-sized American opera house start at around $75 for the cheap seats, which is a lot of money to pay to discover whether you like or hate something.

 

(and just to be clear, I'm not dissing your preference for operas in their original language - everyone should like what they like!  I'm just saying that I think there is a place for translations and that they have a valid role in the world of the art form.)