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Turning Opera into English
in San Francisco, site of the Old Spaghetti Factory
I have been asked to say something about turning opera into English, like how and why. The occasion is timely, in that it was thirty years ago almost to the day that here at the Old Spaghetti Factory, on a raw, rainy night in February 1968, we performed our first opera in English. To quote a line from a cartoon: "It was long ago, but at the time of course it felt like the present."
As many of you know, I had been putting on a weekly series of Sunday night concerts for a good many years -- concerts that included just about every type of ensemble that I could think of. And sure enough, one day a dim, tiny light turned on: why not opera? Certainly not for an entire concert, but perhaps a short, miniature opera to expand and spice up an evening of chamber music.
A natural choice was Mozart's Bastien and Bastienne, a seldom performed piece by a well-known composer, to put it mildly. About forty five minutes in length, a cast of three, an accompaniment basically of string quartet and harpsichord -- it seemed an ideal fit.
However, I quickly became drawn to the piece not only for its music, but particularly for the integrity, persuasiveness and charm of its libretto -- qualities I had not always associated with opera libretti, but more of that later. The story is simple, the situation all too recognizable -- two teenagers are having a lovers' tiff that is eventually resolved. The audience from the start is perfectly aware of the inevitable outcome, whereas the two participants are convinced that their problems are unique and insurmountable; much of the comedy comes from their certainty that they are enveloped in something closely akin to Greek tragedy. After running the gamut of emotions from disbelief, anger and remorse to suicidal despair, they attribute the long-predicted happy ending to the miraculous powers of a friendly philosopher and fortune teller.
The story is told with the affectionate objectivity of someone long past the turmoil of youthful crisis. Few would guess that the composer was in fact younger than the naive couple he was depicting.
To convey its playful irony, such a story had to be told in a language where the audience could follow step by step, moment by moment, what was happening. This is theatre, and the insoluble marriage of music and drama is what opera is about. So with high hopes, I explored the available English translations. What I found seemed hopelessly archaic, artificial and opaque. Instead of clarifying the action, they seemed to cover it with a thick shroud. I decided to have a go at it myself -- not unlike the unsuspecting teenage that takes a puff of his first cigarette. For the past thirty years, I have been a hopeless addict.
The timing of this first venture into the unknown could hardly have been less auspicious. The San Francisco newspapers were on strike. Aside from a few scattered posters and a minuscule mailing list, we were entirely dependent on newspaper calendar listings. Our opening performance was attended by some twenty five people. But it was enough to light the fire, and like the moth, I was drawn into the flame.
Still, it was several years before I dared tackle a full-length, full-scale opera -- years, incidentally, that included intensive cramming in French and Italian.
The mountain was there to be climbed, but to choose Verdi's King for a Day was surely tempting fate. Verdi's second opera -- one cannot imagine more tragic, disheartening circumstances than those that surrounded its creation. The success of his first opera in the preceding year had been overwhelmed by the death of his two infant children, a son and a daughter. Shattered by grief, he was under contract to write a light-hearted comedy. He became ill himself, and before he recovered, his beloved wife was dead at the age of twenty seven. Now utterly alone and close to a nervous breakdown, he begged out of the contract, but his producers were relentless -- possibly for altruistic reasons. He had no choice but to complete the uncongenial task. The opera was produced. The result: total fiasco. The audience booed and hissed. Critics were scathing. All subsequent performances were hastily canceled. Verdi vowed never to write again, and in fact it was fifty years before he could bring himself to write another comedy, near the end of his long life.
King for a Day was not performed again for over a hundred years, when in the 1950's it was dug out by Italian radio, as part of a series that included all of Verdi's operas. Guess what: King for a Day was the surprise hit of the series. Fortunately, the performance was recorded. The proof is right there: the opera sparkles from beginning to end. It has all the verve and energy of a man without a care in the world. It is also very funny. Here the translator rubs his hands and rolls up his sleeves. Much as I sometimes envy the pure vowels and mellifluous polysyllabics of Italian, when it comes to comedy, English has the edge -- agile, compact, pointed, quirky, with an infinitely varied patchwork of color. Check out W.S. Gilbert.
Take the matter of rhyme, for example. In Italian, and French as well, rhyme is so easy, so abundant, that it never makes much of an impression -- end a line with a verb and there you are. But in English, rhyme is potent stuff, though I should add, it can also be lethal.
In King for a Day, the servants at the castle of Kelbar take a downstairs look at what's going on upstairs: "We're the vassal of the castle. Oh, it's lucky to be a lackey! Catch me changing places with a bunch of basket cases."
Our first performance was greeted ecstatically. For the second, a couple of weeks later, shoring up for a huge crowd, we dragged in all available chairs, barrels and benches and placed them so close that they were literally touching. The assembled audience resembled a jig-saw puzzle. The performance was scheduled for seven-thirty. By six-thirty it was impossible to squeeze another human body into the space. Miraculously, the singers and players (then called the New Ravioli Philharmonic) had also arrived. Why wait? For the only time in our history, we decided to start an hour early. As we were about to walk on for the overture, I was informed that two gentlemen were at the door, who identified themselves as New York Times. There was not an inch of space inside. Helplessly, I told them that they were welcome to listen from the hallway. Whether they stayed or not, I do not know. But the New York Times has never returned.
By this time, Pocket Opera was unstoppable, and several comic operas followed, some famous, some not so: Donizetti's Don Pasquale [1976] and Tutor in a Tangle [1977], Così Fan Tutte [1978], La Cenerentola [1979]. But a major challenge was looming. English no doubt was fine for comedy, but what about serious drama? Could the hard edges of English replace the fluid, rolling rhythms of Italian without sounding stilted and laughable? Could we do justice to a thoroughly serious, psychologically probing opera unrelieved by the slightest comic touch? Verdi was again put to the test. We chose another of his failures, Stiffelio [1979] -- an opera, incidentally, that has since been discovered with much fanfare by the Met. The subject, no dissolute duke, no swaggering buffoon, no bizarre fanatic, but a devout Protestant minister, returning from prolonged travels to a troubled marriage, reluctantly compelled to confront the evidence of his wife's infidelity, and the unfolding crisis that eventually leads to forgiveness. The original audiences of Rimini would have none of this. Whoever heard of forgiving an unfaithful wife? What is opera coming to? But the boldness and depth that turned off that audience are the very qualities that make it more appealing, more relevant to audiences of today, who are more attuned to the complexities of human relationship.
Getting back to the matter of translation: in terms of pure, musical sound, Italian undeniably has the advantage; but for sense, I prefer English. Let me give you an example: "La primavera arriverà." Translated: Spring will come. Bear in mind: the translator has to keep to the same number of syllables as the original. Typically: Italian nine; English three. This mean that the English version has to say something about spring: budding flowers, gentle breezes, young love, hope, promise, what you will. In short, this is the translator's golden opportunity to expand, to probe, to clarify, to bring into focus something that in the original is often vague, generalized, abstract. Clothed in English, Stiffelio became truly contemporary, without the shenanigans of transferring the scene to Trump Towers, Harlem, Los Angeles, or any other of the current hotspots.
I should add that reaction was somewhat divided. Some felt that this was the wrong direction for Pocket Opera, but others found it deeply moving, and many claimed that it was their favorite of all the operas we had done. Sadly, the occasion was also memorable for the glowing performance of Kaaren Erickson, making her Pocket Opera debut in the role of the unfaithful but repentant wife. Kaaren died of cancer just a few months ago. In a few weeks, we are dedicating to her memory our first performance of The Magic Flute, an opera that she performed many times with the Met.
Many landmarks followed:
La Belle Hélène [1981], where Pocket Opera first danced to the beat of Offenbach.
Eugene Onegin [1983], where Pushkin and Tchaikovsky explored the land of Chekhov, long before Chekhov.
No Love Allowed [1990], where Pocket Opera dared venture into the forbidden kingdom of Wagner.
Weber's Der Freischutz [1984] -- like Stiffelio, a drama with startling contemporary overtones, which we chose to suggest rather than to lay on with a trowel. The same approach that we intend for Verdi's Gang of Bandits (I Masnadieri), coming up in April.
Mozart's Yanked From the Harem (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) [1987], where we actually did break down and update the story, with young Americans of the not distant past, arrested in Turkey, and subject to the caprices of a local potentate.
Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale [1991], the only opera I know of that has no singing.
In fact, every new production has felt like a landmark as it came along; and to date, Pocket Opera has presented more than eighty operas.
From it all, I have emerged with a profound and unanticipated respect for librettists. Often criticized, berated, scorned and parodied, they knew what they were doing. They knew how to build a sturdy dramatic framework for the composer to flesh out, and collectively they created what we know as opera, the ultimate expression of passion in action. Often working from hit plays of the day, their job was to abridge, to mold in terms of musical design, to provide a precise and varied sequence of arias, duets, ensembles, finales; and above all, to get to the big scenes with a minimum of explanation. In short, the problems of a playwright, much exacerbated. Where the novelist can lavish two or three hundred pages of description and analysis, the playwright is reduced to a scene, the librettist to maybe one or two lines of recitative.
The goal of the translator, as I see it, is not so much to translate as to illuminate, to convey as much as possible with the fewest words: words that are simple but not banal, words that resonate without sounding hollow, that float without sounding inflated, words that somehow get into the bloodstream of the music, words that aim for the heart of the matter.
How is it done? Alas, I have no answer. I can only compare it to fishing: you hold a line in the water long enough and eventually something bites.
