Tristan und Isolde - The Listening Service

[gurnemanz]

The original German is 'Verwünschte Nicker' which is usually translated as 'Accursed water sprites' or something like that. Now there's no way that Wotan's meaning can be conveyed in sung English to fit the music and Porter's solution is a very good one indeed. In German mythology a water sprite is a Nixie.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/nix-German-mythology

"Accursed" is the literal translation of "verwünscht". Porter's "pernicious" adds the connotation "wicked" which is not in the original. I quite like "confounded" in Stewart Spencer's translation for Thames and Hudson. https://thamesandhudson.com/authors/...-spencer-17420

I haven't thought about Wagner's use of "Nicker" before. It is certainly not in common use in the sense of Nixe. Brockhaus doesn't include it at all. Duden online mentions it as a hunter's knife (for cutting an animal's neck, based on Genick = neck). Two other meanings derive from "nicken" (to nod): 1. a single nod of the head 2. a snooze (nodding off).

I am not sure exactly why Wagner uses it for the Rhine maidens, rather than the familiar "Nixe", which he doesn't seem to use at all in the Ring. Maybe he likes the sound of it and its potential for wordplay. He uses "Nicker" several times to refer to the Rhine maidens, but also uses it once in another sense when Siegfried applies it Mime to show his contempt for him as being like a crawling animal in Act I of Siegfried:

beim Genick’ möcht’ ich den Nicker packen,
den Garaus geben dem garst’gen Zwicker!

Translated as:

by the throat I long to catch the crawler
and crush thy life out, thou loathsome nodder!

Stewart Spencer for Thames and Hudson has "dodderer".

[bluestateprommer]

Perhaps getting rather off-topic or general gist, but here's a drolly amusing to read, IMHO, review of a new production of Tristan und Isolde by Opéra de Toulouse:

https://operatoday.com/2023/03/tristan-et-isolde-in-toulouse/

The "drolly amusing to read, IMHO" reasoning is that, at least to me, the text reads as a Google-translation of a review originally in French, from the curious choices of grammar. It's a positive review, so I don't mean to talk the review or the reviewer down at all.

Separately of interest, it was a surprise to see Sophie Koch mentioned as Isolde, since I always thought that she was a mezzo. Or maybe I'm just way out of touch and SK has "moved up" in the field, so to speak.

[LHC]

Perhaps getting rather off-topic or general gist, but here's a drolly amusing to read, IMHO, review of a new production of Tristan und Isolde by Opéra de Toulouse:

https://operatoday.com/2023/03/tristan-et-isolde-in-toulouse/

The "drolly amusing to read, IMHO" reasoning is that, at least to me, the text reads as a Google-translation of a review originally in French, from the curious choices of grammar. It's a positive review, so I don't mean to talk the review or the reviewer down at all.

Separately of interest, it was a surprise to see Sophie Koch mentioned as Isolde, since I always thought that she was a mezzo. Or maybe I'm just way out of touch and SK has "moved up" in the field, so to speak.

She is a mezzo and I don't think has any plans to move into the soprano category full time. She's not the first mezzo to sing Isolde. Waltraud Meier was probably the premier interpreter of Isolde for her generation, but was also a mezzo when it came to most of her other roles. Petra Lang was another noted mezzo who moved up from singing Brangane to take on the part of Isolde.

[smittims]

Christa Ludwig recorded the 'Liebestod' with 'Dr. Klemperer' (as she always called him) and may have sung it on stage . But then , she was always an upwardly-mobile mezzo, witness her wonderful Ortrud on the HMV recording (Kempe).

[Master Jacques]

Andrew Porter’s english translation (which the Chandon, once EMI, set uses) is enjoyed by many German listeners, who take offence at Wagner’s frequently awful ‘poetry’. To my ears, though, Porter’s translation substitutes German doggerel for english windy pomposity. It’s full of english public school terms like ‘booby’ and (at the end of Rheingold) the extraordinary term ‘pernicious nixies!’ What’s a nixie? I’ve never heard of one, outside of this translation ....

The ‘Stabreim’ that Wagner used in his librettos is an essential part of the listening experience, I find. You’re not really getting ‘Wagner Proper’ without it ....

How odd. 'Nixie' has long been part of my personal arsenal of useful, mild insults. It has the great advantage that nobody knows what I'm talking about: although as it sounds much like 'pixie', I think recipients get the general idea.

Coming to Porter .... we should remember that his use of "nixie" here (very close to the German, of course) evokes Troutbeck's original English translations. So Porter has Wotan making a joke at the Rhinemaidens' expense, by using this antiquated word of prostitutional abuse and implying that the girls are "yesterday's people". It's clever, and conveys more about Wotan than about the nixies themselves.

On Porter again, "booby" is not especially public school (Porter was South African, of course, not a British public school boy) but he consciously used the slightly archaic term, to distance the text from his own time, and to stop it sounding modish. If he'd used "wally" instead of "booby" it would have been infinitely more jarring. Nor is "booby" particularly public school, in my opinion: it is pure Elizabethan and applies to any gullible young ass.

[Ein Heldenleben]

How odd. 'Nixie' has long been part of my personal arsenal of useful, mild insults. It has the great advantage that nobody knows what I'm talking about: although as it sounds much like 'pixie', I think recipients get the general idea.

Coming to Porter .... we should remember that his use of "nixie" here (very close to the German, of course) evokes Troutbeck's original English translations. So Porter has Wotan making a joke at the Rhinemaidens' expense, by using this antiquated word of prostitutional abuse and implying that the girls are "yesterday's people". It's clever, and conveys more about Wotan than about the nixies themselves.

On Porter again, "booby" is not especially public school (Porter was South African, of course, not a British public school boy) but he consciously used the slightly archaic term, to distance the text from his own time, and to stop it sounding modish. If he'd used "wally" instead of "booby" it would have been infinitely more jarring. Nor is "booby" particularly public school, in my opinion: it is pure Elizabethan and applies to any gullible young ass.

“Booby “ is also used by Sondheim in Company in the song ‘You Could Drive A Person Crazy”. In the Pennebaker doc he picks up the peerless Pam Myers when she gets the very tricky line “Bobby baby Bobby Booby” wrong . He does it in a quite incredibly polite manner. This raises the intriguing possibly of an Elizabethan word crossing the Atlantic with the Puritans and then being picked up by a New York Jewish genius 500 years later. What I’m saying is booby ain’t public school except in the US sense of public school.

[Master Jacques]

“Booby “ is also used by Sondheim in Company in the song ‘You Could Drive A Person Crazy”. In the Pennebaker doc he picks up the peerless Pam Myers when she gets the very tricky line “Bobby baby Bobby Booby” wrong . He does it in a quite incredibly polite manner. This raises the intriguing possibly of an Elizabethan word crossing the Atlantic with the Puritans and then being picked up by a New York Jewish genius 500 years later. What I’m saying is booby ain’t public school except in the US sense of public school.

Very interesting! It's fun to find antiquated words or phrases here still in constant use over the water - doubtless, in this case, as you say, due to the Puritan hangover. I once directed a production of The Mikado which finished up going across the water and playing Los Angeles, where I was surprised that many such words and phrases which needed footnoting over here, still had currency over there and even got laughs. A minor example which comes to mind was the word "attorney", which we think of as a pure Americanism for "lawyer", but which had perfectly good British credentials with that precise meaning for the Victorians.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Very interesting! It's fun to find antiquated words or phrases here still in constant use over the water - doubtless, in this case, as you say, due to the Puritan hangover. I once directed a production of The Mikado which finished up going across the water and playing Los Angeles, where I was surprised that many such words and phrases which needed footnoting over here, still had currency over there and even got laughs. A minor example which comes to mind was the word "attorney", which we think of as a pure Americanism for "lawyer", but which had perfectly good British credentials with that precise meaning for the Victorians.

Absolutely . At one point Othello calls Desdemona “honey “ as in “Hi, honey I’m home “ from US sitcoms . The use of it as an endearment in England died out pretty much centuries ago I think but persisted in the States. In some ways the Americans speak a “purer “ English than we do . By purer I mean closer to Elizabethan and Jacobean usage - probably the high point of the English language . There’s also the Biblical element - many Americans can quote chapter and verse.

[Master Jacques]

Absolutely . At one point Othello calls Desdemona “honey “ as in “Hi, honey I’m home “ from US sitcoms . The use of it as an endearment in England died out pretty much centuries ago I think but persisted in the States. In some ways the Americans speak a “purer “ English than we do . By purer I mean closer to Elizabethan and Jacobean usage - probably the high point of the English language . There’s also the Biblical element - many Americans can quote chapter and verse.

Excellent. You succeed in making me feel less sour about the corrosive effect of the American language ... at least for one, brief, shining moment!! Purer indeed, if only it weren't for the contrary effect of German portmanteau words on American diction.

I can never forget, that it was a close run thing whether the US Constitution adopted English or German as the official language - an influence which still has its repercussions on clumsy American word coinages.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Excellent. You succeed in making me feel less sour about the corrosive effect of the American language ... at least for one, brief, shining moment!! Purer indeed, if only it weren't for the contrary effect of German portmanteau words on American diction.

I can never forget, that it was a close run thing whether the US Constitution adopted English or German as the official language - an influence which still has its repercussions on clumsy American word coinages.

You’re doing it again. “Brief , shining moment” sounds like English poetry but it’s Alan Lerner (another musical genius ) isn’t it from Camelot ? AL did go to an English public school (Bedales) though - maybe that’s where he picked it up.

[Master Jacques]

You’re doing it again. “Brief , shining moment” sounds like English poetry but it’s Alan Lerner (another musical genius ) isn’t it from Camelot ? AL did go to an English public school (Bedales) though - maybe that’s where he picked it up.

10/10 for spotting the Camelot reference! And yes, Alan Lerner was properly brought up: I'm sure he picked up many things at Bedales.