I just heard a story on NPR about Italian opera composers who are composing operas in English (I think that was the gist–I wasn’t paying enough attention). My first thought was, “No!”, but not because I think operas are better in Italian, but because I absolutely hate going to operas in English because I can’t understand them! Sure, I hear the words, but all of that drawn out singing completely muffles the words for me, and I get nothin’.
“What?”, you say? You can understand the ones in Italian? No! I can’t! But, the opera companies are nice enough to put subtitles (or supertitles, I suppose) above the actors, and I get to follow along in joyous understanding.
Now, maybe I haven’t been to enough English-language operas, and maybe they do, in fact, put subtitles above some English-language operas, but I haven’t seen one. I’m just hoping that the next time I go to an English-language opera, either I miraculously start understanding the words, or that sympathetic opera companies put up English subtitles for English-language operas.
The term surtitles is used here for the translated lyrics shown above the stage.
When I’ve been to operas sung in English, there have generally not been any surtitles - making it pretty easy to distinguish the singers with excellent diction from those whose diction is poor.
The generic term for text projected above the stage, as you guessed, is “supertitle”. Surtitle is a brand name for a specific type of supertitle technology.
Supertitles are used for almost every opera here, regardless if it actually is in English. Even with perfect diction, the acoustics in most venues are geared toward better sounding music, not intelligible speech. The move to title-less English operas is a recent one. There was an article about it in the New York Times not too long ago (“No Supertitle Goes Here, and That’s a Good Thing”).
I can’t understand any lyrics to any music, including pop, blues, or what-have-you. But, I can still tell what the words are (if it’s a language I know.) But it took me years and years of listening to the soundtrack of Amadeus to realise that Zaide - Ruhe Sanft had been translated to English! Doh! :smack:
One of my favorite songs and I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard it in its proper language.
It’s a difficult decision, as is made clear there. And it’s one which really should be made on a piece-by-piece basis. Death in Venice was conceived for Snape Maltings, and Britten wrote music which works in that environment just as described. Whether it will have the same effect in a large opera house is questionable…if it crosses the line from intimate to unintelligible, then supertitles is the way to go. (I saw a stage performance some years ago, in a concert hall, and not a word could be made out.)
Likewise, translates librettos sometimes make sense, and somtimes end up being completely unintelligible. Partly this is the quality of the translation. Partly this is the performance and the acoustic. It also depends on whether conveying the text is actually a crucial element at all, which is an artistic decision which needs to be taken.