NY Times opinion: Let’s hear more opera in English

The occasional op-ed writer John McWhorter, identified as ‘a Columbia University linguist (who) explores how race and language shape our politics and culture’, has just had a thought that if opera was sung in the vernacular more Americans would related to it.

… In Act II of “Die Walküre” (“The Valkyrie”) the god Wotan solemnly recounts the “Ring” story and reflects on his fate for what can be 20 minutes of rumination. It is a pitiless challenge to theatrical momentum that wears me to a nubbin. (I once watched it sitting next to a very famous singer I will refrain from naming, who was so underwhelmed that he spent the whole section canoodling with the woman he had brought.) If the performance had been in English, at least the audience members would have been able to comprehend what they were struggling through….

To the extent that opera in translation acquired real traction here, the advent of supertitles, the simultaneous translations projected above the stage or on the backs of seats, wiped it out in the 1980s. They did spare singers from having to learn the same opera in more than one language. But with supertitles, you’re always peeking away from the action, reading when you’re supposed to be hearing and never — at least in my experience — feeling truly satisfied. Puccini didn’t write “Madama Butterfly” to be read….

And more in the same vein. Full essay here.

What the prof fails to note is that singing in English all but decomated English National Opera, and that no matter what language is sung at the Met nobody can hear a word in those vast spaces. This is not a sustainable argument.

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