Michel Legrand (1932-2019): 6-10/1/25

[Nick Armstrong]

I can't help feeling that - even if I don't understand word for word what is happening - that the sound of the original language is what has driven the composer to write the music in a particular way and so those vowels and consonant groups are a part of the music itself.

This has always been the clincher for me

[oddoneout]

And how far does one need to understand all the words to grasp what's going on? You might just as well argue that the audience has to be musically literate to understand the intricacies of the original score in detail. I'd see words and music as being a warm bath: one can detect, say, the 'Frenchness' of both words and music without understanding in what that Frenchness consists. Put the libretto into English and something is lost.

Disputing whether one view or the other is 'right' or 'better' ? Angels dancing on the head of a pin.

I reckon it's more important that there is a choice than whether one is better than the other.
I'm not an opera person, but if there is a Mozart or Handel one on I will often listen just for enjoyment of the music. Over the years I have picked up the salient features of the Mozart plots(and rather more of The Magic Flute as it was a favourite of my mother's and also I sat through rehearsals of an AmDram production) and bits of the better known Handel ones - helped by their relationship to other stories. However, since for the most part I can't make out the words being sung anyway, the language in which it is being sung isn't so important.
When it comes to choir repertoire, for the most part I would rather sing in the original language* since not only are many translations poor quality and distract from the matter in hand they also interfere with the music itself when, despite translation contortions, they don't fit the original notes. I assume the same can happen in opera.
German, Latin, French - but things like Russian I'll take the translation and try not to wince or laugh at the English contortions.

[french frank]

This has always been the clincher for me

I hadn't realised that what I had written had already been expressed by Roslynmuse . I do agree. The original librettos are seldom literature, subsequent translations don't 100% capture the sense of the originals, why concentrate on the words when you have the music? There's always programme notes and Wikipedia if you can summon up enough interest to check. English for the English seems so ... pedestrian. Opera should be on a different plane ... more magical.

[vinteuil]

However, since for the most part I can't make out the words being sung anyway, the language in which it is being sung isn't so important

... yes, even when they sing in English it's often so hard to hear what's being said that surtitles are helpful if not essential.

Might as well do it in the language wot the composer intended...

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[french frank]

Might as well do it in the language wot the composer intended...

Yes, it's just a common perception that that's snobbish and elitist. Perceptions are often wrong even when they are 'true' (as they say).

[vinteuil]

Perceptions are often wrong even when they are 'true' (as they say).

... two ways to respond -

There was Kellyanne Conway, Counselor [sic] to President Trump on 22 January 2017 - "alternative facts"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts

Personally I prefer the (advisers to the) late Queen - "recollections may vary"

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[french frank]

Personally I prefer the (advisers to the) late Queen - "recollections may vary"

Very diplomatic! Although there may be alternative perceptions and varying recollections, there is only one reality. The problem is when personal recollections and personal perceptions are, innocently or speciously, declared or believed to be absolute, indisputable fact. My consequent unsolicited judgement on you depends on whether you agree with me or not.

[Master Jacques]

I reckon it's more important that there is a choice than whether one is better than the other.
I'm not an opera person ...

Well I am. In one form or other, it has been a large part of my life. And I find that one is certainly "better" than the other. There's too much talk of "choice" and not enough of "quality".

Of course, Forumites are perfectly entitled to disregard the expressed views of Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Janacek, Vaughan Williams (most uncompromising and angry in his language about it, of course, with his talk of "snobs") and the other creators who thought opera in the vernacular certainly "better" than the alternative, a question beyond argument. That is became a question is a sign of our desperate, artistic decadence as a music-theatre culture.

But this is not one of those cases where there the "rights" are equally divided. An opera person is, necessarily, a theatre person; and theatre people believe in verbal communication rather than obfuscation, for the greatest number of audience members.

I am tempted to add that there's nothing wrong with being snobbish and/or elitist about it - that's a matter of choice. But at least folk ought to admit that this is what their game is. Really, I'm reminded of Bach: he had no time for opera as drama at all but took his family along for the swank of it and musical show: "come on children, let's go and hear the pretty tunes". Well that is fine, but don't pretend that Bach's snobbish opinion was as good (in this case) as Handel's, or Mozart's - composers for whom opera was the peak of human artistic endeavour.

[Serial_Apologist]

Very diplomatic! Although there may be alternative perceptions and varying recollections, there is only one reality. The problem is when personal recollections and personal perceptions are, innocently or speciously, declared or believed to be absolute, indisputable fact. My consequent unsolicited judgement on you depends on whether you agree with me or not.

By extension the description is often thought to be synonymous with the described, which it ain't. The Buddhist idea of maya is taken by some writers (I happen to agree with!) as consisting in not mistaking the two: e.g. maya=illusion only in the sense of mistaking the one for the other, not that prior to description the phenomenal world only exists inside the mind, which has erroneously been used by some Western practitioners to describe trance as the highest possible form of consciousness, only obtainable following years and years of meditation practices.

[Master Jacques]

I hadn't realised that what I had written had already been expressed by Roslynmuse . I do agree. The original librettos are seldom literature, subsequent translations don't 100% capture the sense of the originals, why concentrate on the words when you have the music? There's always programme notes and Wikipedia if you can summon up enough interest to check. English for the English seems so ... pedestrian. Opera should be on a different plane ... more magical.

Your point about librettos being "seldom literature" is an interesting one, which lies at the root of the problem. In the History which I'm currently editing, I find we have diametrically opposed views from contributors on that very question. The division is (basically) between the academics and critics, who judge librettos as "literature", and front-line performers who judge them by theatrical and musical criteria which have nothing to do with their perceived value (or not) as "poetry". For me, the academics are prone to look at opera texts through the wrong end of the telescope. Writers such as Metastasio, Da Ponte, Auden or even Giacosa and Illica do their job superbly - and that job is not competing with Shakespeare, Lope de Vega or Pinter. "Literature" is an irrelevant comparison.

Just because most translations fall short of perfection, does not mean that the exercise is invalid. I urge you to think about my robust point about the power of translation being superior to original language opera (even if you insist academically on "literary merit"), in that because every generation can create its verbal text anew, this keeps any particular opera alive for longer than being wedded to progressively unreadable "original" texts (e.g. Monteverdi, Purcell, Wagner). And "bad" translations disappear soon enough.

The "magical" argument points to the fact that, for "original language fundamentalists", the new question has become an article of faith, rather than theatrical reality.

(PS. The current rationale for "original language" has everything to do with finances and globalisation, whatever the negative consequences to "opera as drama" may be, by having multi-lingual casts going at them, rather than singers drawn from the locale. Plus, companies dislike having to shell out for translations.)

[vinteuil]

a question beyond argument .... An opera person is, necessarily, a theatre person

Me Jacques - we've been here before : these are you assertions.

Others disagree quite as firmly

Your continuing use of pejorative language - brigade, fundamentalists &c - in no way helps your case






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[french frank]

Just because most translations fall short of perfection, does not mean that the exercise is invalid.

I didn't say it was invalid. I don't criticise it. It has its place. It should exist for those who want it. But I don't know why you consider it "fundamentalist" (in a derogatory sense) if some people appreciate something in the original which translation misses, and who consequently prefer original language opera.

Fundamentalist: "A person who believes in the primacy of fundamental tenets or principles." It seems to me that there's only one person here who believes in the primacy of their view over the opposing one.

[Master Jacques]

Me Jacques - we've been here before : these are you assertions.

Others disagree quite as firmly

Your continuing use of pejorative language - brigade, fundamentalists &c - in no way helps your case
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Forgive my talking plainly. Either we believe in opera or we don't - and I'm aware my partisanship is most "un-English", paradoxically enough! But opera is "what I do". It's not a "case", but a "cause".

I'm also sorry if you (or anyone else) find the variety of matters I've raised uncomfortable, or dislike my vehemence in expressing them (much of which is simply follows RVW!) But I have carefully screened my replies so as not to appear pejorative to individuals within the forum. Fundamentalism really is the problem here, and we can't ignore it: the reality is that I argue for "Opera in English" to complement "original language" productions, which have always taken centre stage here in England - though not elsewhere - and always will. This original-language fetish is one reason that England has been perceived (wrongly, I think) as a "non-operatic country", culturally. Opera is perceived as having no native roots here. Wrongly, again.

But - here's the point - we live in a time of terminal crisis, in which "Opera in English" is fighting for its life, cut out of the national "conversation" by an Arts Council set on destroying over a hundred years' hard work. At the end of that hundred-plus years at least we no longer had English operas forced to take their premieres in Italian (as was the case with poor Stanford at Covent Garden), and I make no apology for standing up to be counted. Opera in English is a cause which ought to matter to all of us, whether we go to opera for the drama or - like Bach - for the "pretty tunes". Or increasingly, in the age of Spotify, think we don't need to go to opera at all.

We can disagree, I hope, without losing sight of this - most important - current crisis for Opera in English. We must stand firm, without bickering about it - and without sneering (please) at the truly fantastic work of translators down the centuries, from Dryden to Auden and Andrew Porter.

[Master Jacques]

Others disagree quite as firmly.

Vinteuil, if an "opera person" is not a "theatre person", then what are they? I'd be intrigued to hear a viable alternative to my alleged "assertion". Opera is (surely) music theatre, the cover-all term which takes in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as well as Parsifal and Eight Songs for a Mad King. Or do you consider it something else?

[Master Jacques]

I didn't say it was invalid. I don't criticise it. It has its place. It should exist for those who want it. But I don't know why you consider it "fundamentalist" (in a derogatory sense) if some people appreciate something in the original which translation misses, and who consequently prefer original language opera.

Fundamentalist: "A person who believes in the primacy of fundamental tenets or principles." It seems to me that there's only one person here who believes in the primacy of their view over the opposing one.

Well ... the personal accusation seems to me unfair. A lot of posts claim to know what this or that composer's original "intentions" were, where such questions are a matter of exactly such beliefs. As I've said, I have to believe in the pluracy of practical approaches to operatic production, because that's how things are. I don't wish to ban Covent Garden from doing (e.g.) Janacek in Czech: I merely believe that the British public shouldn't have to pay for it.