From: jfh@netcom.com (Jack Hamilton)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Supertitling
Date: 29 Aug 92 02:25:32 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <Btp9nG.MuI@news.udel.edu> conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad) 
wrote:
>
>I have an opinion, an unpopular one.  I hate them.  I think they wreck
>the live experience of an opera, and turn it into television (I don't
>despise television, but a live theatrical experience is something else).

I don't think anything can turn opera, or any live theatrical experience,
into television - at least, not until television technology is a lot better
than it is now - three dimensional pictures, wraparound sound, etc. 

>This gives us a reading-medium and a visual-medium that our eyes can
>flip back and forth between, to keep us from being bored.  But it wrecks
>the involvement that I go to the opera for.

I don't find it so.  

>(No, I can't "just ignore
>them."  They're rather conspicuous.)

The San Francisco War Memorial Opera House has seats from which the
supertitles cannot be seen.  I assume that most other supertitled houses
also do.  You could sit there. 

>It's also true that they're often poorly managed, badly synchronized,
>oversimplified, all that.  But presumably all that could be fixed in
>time.  My objection is more fundamental.  I really think that the
>prevalence of supertitles will kill opera in the next few decades,
>because the medium will become nothing more than an idle evening's
>time-killer, just like 3 hours of prime time.

If anything kills opera in the next few decades (which seems unlikely to
me), I think it will be cost.  The kind of intimate experience which makes
live opera really worthwhile can't be obtained in the large houses which
must be built in order to have enough income. 

>You *have* to keep your
>eyes on the stage in the opera, if you're serious about getting
>everything the medium has to offer.

Some of the time, but not all of the time.  There are certainly stretches
in the Ring, for example, when everyone is just standing around singing.
That's partly because singers are sometimes hired for singing skill+volume 
rather than singing skill+acting ability.  Again, the big-house problem.

>As an alternative:  Why has everybody given up on performing opera in
>translation?

Good question.  Why is it so many choral conductors think that they have to
do works in german that no one in the chorus can pronounce properly and no
one in the audience could understand anyway?  I think there's a little bit
of inferiority complex there. 

>THAT is a live, compelling experience.  When I was a music
>student at Indiana U, I saw 6-8 operas a year in English.  The
>productions were not always wonderful (though often surprisingly good),
>but boy that was a wonderful way to wake up to what opera can be.  So
>was the one segment of the English National Opera RING in English that I
>saw live (their recordings are special too).  That company remains
>committed to opera in English (except for one aberration in classical
>Greek that was recently forced on them), as the Met does to opera in the
>original language (occasionally in translation).  In both cases, without
>supertitles.  I say bravo to both of them.  SOMEbody has to keep alive
>the idea that it's the performers' job to communicate.

Last summer, during the San Francisco Opera's summer Mozart festival, I saw
a large scale production of "The Abduction from the Seraglio" in german at 
the Opera House, and Donald Pippin's Pocket Opera production of "Yanked from 
the Harem", an english translation, at the Pacific Gas and Electric in-house 
theatre.  The singers were almost as good at the Pocket, and were
definitely better actors (or maybe it was just that I could actually see
their faces). 

What's more, I could understand all the words.  I can never understand all
the words at the Opera House, even when the production is in english
(that's why they supertitle english-language operas - no one else can
understand the words either).  Between the large hall and the strong accents 
of some of the singers, it's just not possible to tell what they're
saying.

>I do think there are occasional times when supertitles might make sense:
>a visiting company doing a very rare work in a language likely to be
>unfamiliar to most of its viewers.  In such a case, the loss entailed by
>using supertitles may be offset by the gain in comprehensibility.  But
>for other cases, it's not that hard to do your homework about CARMEN.

Maybe, it's difficult to keep all of the dialogue in mind during a long
opera.  It's bothersome to hear other people laughing at the stage action,
and not know why. 

>Don't bother to write attacking me as an "elitist" (meaningless word
>anyway) -- I've been called worse.  All I am is an opera lover who
>doesn't want his favorite medium to fizzle away to nothing.

I think I'll bother anyway.  What's elitist about your attitude is idea
that everyone has the time to devote to memorizing libretti.  If you want
audiences to understand the opera, and you want those audiences to be large
enough to pay the production costs, you'll have to compromise.  There just
aren't enough Patrons Of The Arts to keep things going. 

You might say "I don't care if big productions are done anymore.
Everything can be done by groups like I.U. and Pocket Opera."  For old
works, yes, but where will new works then come from.  It's not reasonable
to expect composers to starve, but only big companies can afford to pay for
new works.

-- 

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Jack Hamilton   jfh@netcom.com   P. O. Box 281107   SF, CA   94128-1107
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical