The Magic Flute - Glyndebourne - cinema screening

[Master Jacques]

Scottish Opera's Magic Flute is in English - and is brilliant, and very funny. Not all opera done in English (albeit with a slightly different accent ) is anything like as good as that.

Excellent, and well done Scottish Opera! 50 years ago no company would have dreamed of doing it in anything other than English, but unfortunately fashion dictates otherwise today. Covent Garden did two experimental performances under Klemperer in German, in 1962; but the response was so negative that they went back to doing it in English until 1979.

Doing opera in English doesn't guarantee success, but then not all opera done in foreign languages works either. Doing Jenufa in Czech here, rather than a language - be it English or Scottish! - which the audience can understand gives no assured quality control. As an art form opera has always been hit and miss, and it always will be. That's what makes it exciting, and unpredictable, yes?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It's not so much a question of "believing in" as "vastly preferring", MJ. With literature, my profound ignorance of most languages means that, whilst I would vastly prefer to read the words that the writers created, I have to make do with translations. I am deeply aware that I am losing the most important aspect of the works - but there's no longer time for me to learn Italian, Russian, German, French (etc ad inf) to the standard to enable me to read Eco, Tolstoy, Goethe, or Proust fluently, so I have to make do with the best translations I can get - and as many different ones, where possible. (I imagine that this is not very dissimilar to people who cannot read Music relying on the many readings of different performers to get close to a piece of Music.) And, with Opera (and choral & vocal works) the main focus - sometimes the only focus - is the Music (the rhythms, the tonal shifts, the orchestration, the textures, the melodies, the harmonies) that tell me more of what is "going on" that the texts of the libretto. Not that the libretto is "disposable" - it has moved the composer to think the Music in that individual way - but that is why I vastly prefer to listen to the original language; the syllables and phrasing that the composer cared for as much as the timbres of the instruments.

You are absolutely right, of course, that "people go to the opera for all sorts of reasons". My own, individual reason is promarily to hear the sounds that a composer created in a Live hall. I adore Wagner, Mozart, Janacek etc etc etc on record, and many recordings show standards of insight that often Live performances do not match - but the sheer physical sound of Live Music making buzzing under your feet, grabbing you in the stomach, resounding in your ears as you leave the Theatre/Concert Hall (even of a second-rate performance) is something that isn't matched over loudspeakers - at least not in my 16-foot square maximum room size. The staging is - well, to call it "secondary" perhaps makes it sound less important to me than it actually is: but I can cope with a second-rate staging with an excellent Musical production - though it does take the edge off an evening. As does, for me, an excellent staging in a production that uses an English translation.

It's not a dogmatic thing (nor even a fetish ) - I will go along to Operas in English translations if it's a work I adore; indeed, I have to. But given the choice, I'd not hesistate in chosing the original language production.

[Master Jacques]

Speaking of my own neck of the woods, FG, the great thing is that we have two once-mighty opera companies. One is devoted heart and soul to opera in English (the only work I can recall which was performed there in anything else, was Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, in the original Latin - chosen specifically by Stravinsky in order to distance its viewers from the text). The other - which used to perform everything either in English or in the one-time operatic 'lingua franca' of Italian - now almost always, though not invariably, presents productions in their original language.

That means we have a choice: I can go to see and hear opera in English, you can plump for the alternative. The danger is, that if one of the two goes to the wall, it will almost certainly be the National Opera company, rather than the International one. That's why today - more than ever - I feel the need to speak out to defend something in which I (for one, and mercifully I am not alone) have passionately believed since first realising that opera was not some exotic, snobbish and expensive business with a lot of fat tenors bawling away in Italian - which sadly is still how the majority of the British public still views this "elitist" (grrrr!) art form - but a living, breathing form of lyric theatre which belonged to me as much as to any Italian, or German, or Russian.

If we want to pull down these stupid perceptions surrounding "exclusivity", then - whatever our own personal preference - we all need to man the barricades to keep the cause of "opera in English" alive. In our lifetimes - thanks to Vaughan Williams, Britten, Tippett, Max and many other brilliant composers of opera in English, including Stravinsky himself - we've seen the end of that fatuous nonsense which used to declare that English was not a language "suitable for opera". Accept that, and we must accept that opera in translation is as natural and good to have as poetry or spoken drama in translation: or would we rather watch Strindberg in Swedish with surtitles? Again, as with opera (in my opinion), the dramatic loss would massively outweigh the verbal-music gains.

We are lucky to be able to choose: but we should bear in mind, that if opera in English is allowed to die, then live opera itself will follow pretty smartly, becoming something heard on Spotify (with gaps between "songs") or watched on YouTube, rather than a living, breathing experience. And I hope nobody here wants that!

[doversoul1]

I have not read the entire thread so if I am missing the point, I apologise. I would just like to make one point and that is about translated literature. Unlike translating opera libretto, translating literary text does not have the constraint of having to fit the words into music or stage actions. Translators do their best to make the translated text sound as natural as possible in the target language yet without losing its ‘foreignness’. You could say that literary translation is almost like performing a work of music written on paper.

There was a broadcast on R3 awhile ago of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d'Ulisse in English. It was probably my ignorance but I could hardly recognise the music.

[Master Jacques]

I have not read the entire thread so if I am missing the point, I apologise. I would just like to make one point and that is about translated literature. Unlike translating opera libretto, translating literary text does not have the constraint of having to fit the words into music or stage actions. Translators do their best to make the translated text sound as natural as possible in the target language yet without losing its ‘foreignness’. You could say that literary translation is almost like performing a work of music written on paper.

Good point about the removal of that one restraint when it comes to novels, but of course it doesn't apply to poetry or verse drama, where the translator is usually working within the original verse forms. Here's a secret you might not like: good opera translators are never afraid to subtly change musical phrases to sit more easily with English texts. If we're dealing with anything from Wagner onwards in Germanic/Slav traditions, very few people are going to notice (they don't notice if whole scenes get cut, either!) and the gains in fluency are immense. I have by me a score of Humperdinck's Königskinder with the excellent Pountney English text, and there's hardly a musical phrase in the German original which didn't get altered. It looks a mess, but nothing is lost and the gains are infinite.

It works the other way round too: take a look at the German translation of The Rape of Lucretia printed in the v/s, and many phrases are subtly changed, in that case with Britten's active approval to make the German version as natural as possible. We're talking about theatre professionals here, who know that pragmatism is better than some pie-in-the-sky aesthetic "purity".

The reason 19th c. Italian opera is most difficult to translate (whether into German, English or anything much else) is not its (alleged) mellifluousness of vowels and hard consonants, but its rigorous forms, chiselled phrase lengths and feminine endings (thus the endless "let's go now" sort of rubbish to which bad translators resort). This only applies to Rossini through Verdi: I've translated Handel and Puccini myself, and I can report that they are a dream!

[gurnemanz]

Ferney has already made the points for me. I will nearly always prefer to hear the words as set by the composer whether I know the language (French, German) or not (Czech). The rhythm of Janacek's music is one with the rhythm of the language. Surtitles may sometimes distract but generally do an invaluable job.
The specific case of The Magic Flute is a tricky one. It is not an opera but a Singspiel - a play with singing, and with elements of panto. It has quite a lot of spoken dialogue. Personally I would still prefer German but a good case may be made for English.

[Master Jacques]

Ferney has already made the points for me. I will nearly always prefer to hear the words as set by the composer whether I know the language (French, German) or not (Czech). The rhythm of Janacek's music is one with the rhythm of the language. Surtitles may sometimes distract but generally do an invaluable job.
The specific case of The Magic Flute is a tricky one. It is not an opera but a Singspiel - a play with singing, and with elements of panto. It has quite a lot of spoken dialogue. Personally I would still prefer German but a good case may be made for English.

Fair enough, though I'd say surtitles "always" distract, rather than "may sometimes". They produce Verfremdungseffekt as swiftly and completely as any of Stravinsky's Latin in Oedipus! Janacek is a particular sufferer, as the words go so fast that unless you have the reactions of Lewis Hamilton it is physically impossible to follow them and listen to the music and watch the stage! Again, I don't know any theatre professionals who view them as anything other than a loathsome intrusion, getting between them and their audience.

Singspiel, operetta, opera comique, zarzuela, English ballad opera, the Savoy operas .... Fidelio, Carmen, Ruddigore and the rest. All of these are plays with music, like all operas. Your "good case" applies to everything, I feel, without exception. If we're looking for some sort of aesthetic purity with "the words as set by the composer", then I fear we're never going to find it in the theatre, even as a "best case" scenario.

What I still don't understand is why sensible people such as yourself, or FG, who wouldn't dream of reading Pushkin in Russian rather than English, somehow feel opera is a different case, where it doesn't matter whether you understand precisely what Onegin is saying to Tatyana or not. Believe me, it matters. It matters a great deal. I am honestly baffled!

[doversoul1]

Master Jacques

Many thanks for your insightful explanation about opera translation. As for poetry translation, it is commonly thought it best to leave it to poets who can re-create the original.

I think there was a similar discussion on the forum in the past. I remember vaguely that there were two ‘camps’; those who listen to opera as music and those who see opera as the art of theatre.

[Master Jacques]

Master Jacques

Many thanks for your insightful explanation about opera translation. As for poetry translation, it is commonly thought it best to leave it to poets who can re-create the original.

I think there was a similar discussion on the forum in the past. I remember vaguely that there were two ‘camps’; those who listen to opera as music and those who see opera as the art of theatre.

Thank you for your kind tolerance! I'd add that opera translation is equally best left to people who understand both drama and music: sometimes it's done by people who seem to have little idea about either. One can't "recreate" the original perfectly, ever (take literary translations from Japanese, for example) but the job is to capture the "spirit" - however we perceive that.

Two camps indeed ... and they've been there throughout opera's history, as soon as 1607 and Monteverdi's Orfeo came along to spoil the balance. Remember Strauss's Capriccio centres on precisely this debate - "Prima le parole e dopo la musica", or vice versa, depending on taste. Yet both sides must try to respect and understand the other - easy I think (not!)

And so, as someone once said, to bed.

[doversoul1]

Thank you for your kind tolerance! I'd add that opera translation is equally best left to people who understand both drama and music: sometimes it's done by people who seem to have little idea about either. One can't "recreate" the original perfectly, ever (take literary translations from Japanese, for example) but the job is to capture the "spirit" - however we perceive that.

Two camps indeed ... and they've been there throughout opera's history, as soon as 1607 and Monteverdi's Orfeo came along to spoil the balance. Remember Strauss's Capriccio centres on precisely this debate - "Prima le parole e dopo la musica", or vice versa, depending on taste. Yet both sides must try to respect and understand the other - easy I think (not!)

And so, as someone once said, to bed.

It just may be because I grew up listening to (mostly) American pop songs with the words in print and watching films in foreign languages with subtitles, I developed a sort of mental ability or a habit to hear and comprehend as a dual-source activity (if this makes sense). I am definitely in the ‘opera as music’ camp but I wouldn’t ever argue that one is better or more correct than the other, simply because I am not knowledgeable enough in the area.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What I still don't understand is why sensible people such as yourself, or FG, who wouldn't dream of reading Pushkin in Russian rather than English, somehow feel opera is a different case, where it doesn't matter whether you understand precisely what Onegin is saying to Tatyana or not. Believe me, it matters. It matters a great deal. I am honestly baffled!

Where do you get this idea from, MJ? I have - not recently, but certainly a few times in my teens and twenties - actually dreamt of picking up a book (one time it was in Persian!) and being able to read it at sight! It is my inability to read foreign literature in the original language that prevents me - not my aversion.

If I ever felt the need to listen to the Opera Eugene Onegin, then I would certainly read the libretto a few times with the parallel English translation in the weeks leading up to the performances, so that I could then concentrate on the Music during the performance itself - because it is in the Music that the real drama is primarily presented, not in the story. The confusions in The Ring arise from the text - the Music has no such contradictions; the absurdities of Cosi fan Tutte are absent from the score that Mozart wrote.

Could you in turn explain why, when Opera is primarily a Musical experience (if it is - it is for me), you are happy to hear rhythms, accents, and vowel sounds altered from the composer's original in the subsidiary name of "the story"?

[Master Jacques]

Where do you get this idea from, MJ? I have - not recently, but certainly a few times in my teens and twenties - actually dreamt of picking up a book (one time it was in Persian!) and being able to read it at sight! It is my inability to read foreign literature in the original language that prevents me - not my aversion.

If I ever felt the need to listen to the Opera Eugene Onegin, then I would certainly read the libretto a few times with the parallel English translation in the weeks leading up to the performances, so that I could then concentrate on the Music during the performance itself - because it is in the Music that the real drama is primarily presented, not in the story. The confusions in The Ring arise from the text - the Music has no such contradictions; the absurdities of Cosi fan Tutte are absent from the score that Mozart wrote.

Could you in turn explain why, when Opera is primarily a Musical experience (if it is - it is for me), you are happy to hear rhythms, accents, and vowel sounds altered from the composer's original in the subsidiary name of "the story"?

Forgive me, that was a badly-phrased sentence from me: perhaps "couldn't dream..." would have better expressed the impossibility (for the great majority of us English) of picking up Pushkin and reading him in the original.

"Reading the libretto a few times with the parallel English translation" is an admirable example of how anyone ought to do their homework, before seeing an opera they didn't previously know. But the idea you were going through that chore, so you could then forget about it and "concentrate on the music" would not get you very far with Tchaikovsky's work, which (famously) he describes as "Lyric Scenes from..." rather than "opera". That's because he assumes knowledge of large sections of the story which simply aren't there in his stage work.

The idea that the "real drama is primarily presented" in the music is, I think, a curious metaphor here (as always). Occasionally it is, yes, as a special effect (e.g. the interludes in Wozzeck.) As a general rule drama lies in the combination of words and music, and you can't have one without the other. If you simply extract the notes of the scene where Onegin lets Tatyana down after receiving her letter they don't add up to a hill of musical beans: add in the words, in a language you can hear and understand without having to go gazing at surtitles every two seconds, and you have a moving and true exposition of the tragedy of our human condition - or one of them.

That's why I absolutely can't follow you in agreeing that The Ring and Cosí fan Tutte would somehow lose their multiple contradictions if you only concentrated on the music and forget about the text: even if you could distil the musical experience in that way (including the recitatives in Mozart??) the whole interest of both works lies in those very contradictions. Can you name anyone who has written illuminatingly about either work, or performed either work memorably, who has not revelled in those fascinating contradictions - because that's where their value lies - rather than in the pretty pedal point of the Rhine music, or the "sublimity" of Cosí's "farewell" trio. These things work ironically, because we know how they are about to be subverted by the drama. The exact same thing is true of The Magic Flute too, of course: the contradictions of the Queen's position make it interesting, and disturbing, because our desire to have our fairy tales smoothed out into "goodies and baddies" is not satisfied.

Yes, yes and thrice yes! I am happy to hear musical phrases rewritten, of course, not in "the subsidiary name of 'the story'" (whatever that is!) but because character, interaction and dramatic ideas are inate in the words as well as the music, and - just as in any translation - the spirit is infinitely more important than the letter. It's not as if the original score was being destroyed in the individual moment of changing it. Otherwise we're talking about some sort of dead museum art: and opera, however we like to take it, cannot afford to become fossilised or set in stone.

[doversoul1]

Master Jacques

But the idea you were going through that chore, so you could then forget about it and "concentrate on the music"

I think you may need to rephrase this too. I have no specialist knowledge of opera but even for me, reading the libretto beforehand is definitely not a chore that one goes through as part of a deal.

[kernelbogey]

Of the many interesting ideas being debated here, I will simply now record my disagreement with MJ's view of surtitles. Even knowing German, I found it useful to be able to scan the subtitles in this film, while also listening to the sung or spoken words.

(I may have had an advantage in having watched innumerable films in languages other than English over more than sixty years - there is an element of learned skill involved.)

I believe it is a mistake to think that surtitles, which I have used in the same way in the theatre, distract from the audience's experience of what is happening on the stage. The human brain is much more versatile than that - we can take in both, in whatever way suits our knowledge of the language concerned, or our disposition towards the theatre experience we are attending.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well - at least I hope that you are less "baffled" than before, MJ

I think it's probably best to leave it with mutual respect and disagreement with each other's stance? The one thing I would clarify is that to "concentrate on the Music" is not at all to "forget about the text" - but to understand it as a source of rhythm and vowels as much a part of the Music as, say, the timbre and register of the instruments. And paying attention to those matters ensures - as it does in purely instrumental Music - that the genre cannot ossify. (That's my irritation with some productions which seem to take the line "this story is ridiculous - these people are singing instead of speaking: that's ridiculous, too - so it's perfectly legitimate for me to put things on stage that are even more ridiculous, to prevent Opera from becoming a Museum piece". The Music - if it was ever alive in the first place - is reborn afresh every time, whether it's staged in tights or in the Lift during the Harrods Sale with Wotan in a gymslip.)

(Did I say "the one thing"? )