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

[Nick Armstrong]

I can’t help feeling that when in future anyone tries to find this ‘language in opera’ debate, they will struggle to do so under the ‘Michel Legrand’ heading…

Perhaps the various posts could be extricated and used to create a new thread with an appropriately relevant title in the ‘opera’ section of the forum?

(In days of old when hosts were bold, I could have done this. Sadly the new forum doesn’t allow it - or perhaps it’s because I only use iOS machinery these days )

[Master Jacques]

I can’t help feeling that when in future anyone tries to find this ‘language in opera’ debate, they will struggle to do so under the ‘Michel Legrand’ heading…

Perhaps the various posts could be extricated and used to create a new thread with an appropriately relevant title in the ‘opera’ section of the forum?

(In days of old when hosts were bold, I could have done this. Sadly the new forum doesn’t allow it - or perhaps it’s because I only use iOS machinery these days )

I did try to go back to mentioning The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in my last post, but heartily agree with your point. When this eternal debate does recur (at regular intervals!) it often seems to infect innocent threads. Perhaps it should have its own space.

[french frank]

Well ... the personal accusation seems to me unfair.

I meant on this particular topic, not on the forum in general! I do have sympathy for the Opera in English enthusiasts. I do think the treatment of ENO has been diabolical. There may indeed be some truth in the axiom that the English are no good with foreign languages and that that might sadly put people off even trying opera. I may underestimate people's difficulty with the unfamiliar - my own travels alone in countries where I spoke not a word of the language taught me that somehow one gets by. But I do feel that in a large theatre or opera house much of the libretto is hard, sometimes impossible, to catch; and that, unlike in pure drama, that relegates the words to a lesser importance, which is why I'm less exercised by this issue.

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.

Well, it's a point of view. I would hope that the British were more open to the enriching elements of the world in general than that.

[vinteuil]

... if an "opera person" is not a "theatre person", then what are they?

... you have self-identified as 'a theatre person'.

Not everyone shares that self-identification. Some very much do not.

Some privilege the music over the words when it comes to opera.

What was it that those composers said when it came down to such priorities?

ah yes - "Prima la musica e poi le parole"

.

[french frank]

What was it that those composers said when it came down to such priorities?

ah yes - "Prima la musica e poi le parole"

.

I think it was Hofmannsthal who thought of his librettos as being as important works of art as Strauss's music. It would be interesting to speculate what he would have felt about having his words translated.

[Master Jacques]

... you have self-identified as 'a theatre person'.

Not everyone shares that self-identification. Some very much do not.

Some privilege the music over the words when it comes to opera.

What was it that those composers said when it came down to such priorities?

ah yes - "Prima la musica e poi le parole"

.

What I "identify" as (or might) is not the point here. And you might recall that Salieri's title was a witty inversion of the original line, prima le parole... made for absurd comic effect. It was never intended to be taken seriously, because that is not how opera gets written, 99.9% of the time (see my earlier comments on text 'monsters' from Verdi and others).

So to get back to my question: if opera is not a form of music theatre, then what is it, for you?

[Master Jacques]

I think it was Hofmannsthal who thought of his librettos as being as important works of art as Strauss's music. It would be interesting to speculate what he would have felt about having his words translated.

He would have expected it, and probably have been active in giving advice (as he did with his own plays).

[Master Jacques]

I meant on this particular topic, not on the forum in general! I do have sympathy for the Opera in English enthusiasts. I do think the treatment of ENO has been diabolical. There may indeed be some truth in the axiom that the English are no good with foreign languages and that that might sadly put people off even trying opera. I may underestimate people's difficulty with the unfamiliar - my own travels alone in countries where I spoke not a word of the language taught me that somehow one gets by. But I do feel that in a large theatre or opera house much of the libretto is hard, sometimes impossible, to catch; and that, unlike in pure drama, that relegates the words to a lesser importance, which is why I'm less exercised by this issue.

Well, it's a point of view. I would hope that the British were more open to the enriching elements of the world in general than that.

I don't say "no Janacek": but why should the public pay for operas to be performed, in London, in minority languages which almost nobody in the audience can understand? Janacek deserves better than that. And its the original-language aspect here which accounts for the persistent idea of opera as some sort of exclusive, elitist foreign nonsense.

I don't know whether you heard Pick of the Week tonight on Radio 4? If not, I urge you to hear what was precisely selected to represent "opera" as far as we British see it - i.e. a ludicrous, pretentious and "exotic" absurdity.

[vinteuil]

So to get back to my question: if opera is not a form of music theatre, then what is it, for you?

I call it opera

.

[french frank]

why should the public pay for operas to be performed, in London, in minority languages which almost nobody in the audience can understand?

It all seems to come back to how important one thinks it is to understand the words. One could think of them as being, like the music, just sounds; the essentials of the plot are clear enough. But that is my thinking. I can well understand that from your very different perspective of having produced/directed opera your view is very different. But perhaps mine is closer to what an average audience member feels?

[Ein Heldenleben]

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.)

It’s quite an interesting artistic point isn’t it ? Of the three elements of Opera words , music and stage setting two , supposedly , are unvarying - the music and the words. But in translation even the words can change or be adapted to modern speech. In the words of Cecil B de Mille in his advice to script writers adapting Biblical texts “ don’t give me thees and thous - this is a damn hot tale .” That’s what makes the art form so fascinating - - it’s ability to renew itself and not sound or feel archaic. A translation is a reinterpretation and , sometimes , an improvement on the original. We must not contain a live vibrant art in the straight jacket of an original language Puritanism .

Your PS is absolutely right.

[Master Jacques]

I call it opera.

Which simply means, of course "work". It looks as if there isn't an alternative to the theatrical component. I happen to agree with you, in fact, that "everything is just opera" - but the 19th-21st c. term "music theatre" makes sure that we're not trying to be exclusive, which is (I think) helpful. But "opera" certainly, in my book, includes The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Patience and Oliver! just as firmly as it includes Monteverdi's Orfeo and Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron.

I don't "do" genres and sub-genres.

[Master Jacques]

It’s quite an interesting artistic point isn’t it ? Of the three elements of Opera words , music and stage setting two , supposedly , are unvarying - the music and the words. But in translation even the words can change or be adapted to modern speech. In the words of Cecil B de Mille in his advice to script writers adapting Biblical texts “ don’t give me thees and thous - this is a damn hot tale .” That’s what makes the art form so fascinating - - it’s ability to renew itself and not sound or feel archaic. A translation is a reinterpretation and , sometimes , an improvement on the original. We must not contain a live vibrant art in the straight jacket of an original language Puritanism .

Your PS is absolutely right.

Well said! "The ability to renew itself" is absolutely necessary, even under the "museum mentality" of many opera houses and intendants (a mentality which Lord Harewood, for one, thought inevitable in a repertoire which changes so slowly and admits so few new "exhibits").

And as with the use of modern theatrical stagecraft, the modern language available through translation enables it to renew itself with - often spectacular - power, which is increasingly unavailable with the original texts, as time marches on. To come back to Legrand, I think what he and Demy achieved in Les parapluies... was part of this perpetual and exciting renewal process.

[Master Jacques]

It all seems to come back to how important one thinks it is to understand the words. One could think of them as being, like the music, just sounds; the essentials of the plot are clear enough. But that is my thinking. I can well understand that from your very different perspective of having produced/directed opera your view is very different. But perhaps mine is closer to what an average audience member feels?

Of course the more one is interested in an opera, the more one wants to know about what's being said beyond the "essentials of the plot". It's the same as with Shakespeare, Strindberg or Pinter.

For instance, that's what all those books on The Ring deal with: what's said, often (it may be felt) to the (frustrating) exclusion of what is sung and played. Many critics rest content with listing the Leitmotiven, and then go into exegesis of the verbal text. That - and of course the stagecraft of new productions - are much more discussed than Wagner's pretty straightforward music.

I don't think it is possible, is it?, to define what an "average audience member" might or might not be interested in. I've learned a heck of lot from comments dropped from audience members, sometimes in phenomenally detailed attention to what's happening sub-textually between characters, in intricate verbal exchanges. Audiences never cease to surprise me, for sure!

[oliver sudden]

Handel's, or Mozart's - composers for whom opera was the peak of human artistic endeavour.

Handel wrote operas in Italian for England, and Mozart wrote operas in Italian for Vienna and Prague.