Nothing Happens in August and Nothing Rhymes with Orange
Wednesday, August 22, 2007 - Okay. First of all my deepest apologies for the long hiatus since my last post. As you can tell from the title of this post 1) I've had tremendous difficulty reaching many of the people that I've needed to reach and 2) I've been immersed in translating Orpheus in the Underworld. But more on translation anon. First things first.
I'm pleased to report that I've found a carpenter who will build the set for Alcina for the amount that we had originally budgeted. His name is Lewis Shaw and in addition to his set construction skills (an excellent example of which is the Globe-inspired permanent facility at the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival), he is also a fantastic fight-choreographer and one of the countries most sought-after crafter of stage weaponry. I've always been fond of working with "jack of all trades" types, being one myself. So, Lewis will soon be embarking on the realization of Milagros Ponce de Leon's curvilinear, Op-Art inspired set, and I can check one thing off my to-do list. Trouble is, generally when I check something off, I find that two or three items have been added to the bottom of the list in the meantime.
One of the ongoing to-do items is assembling the various text and graphic components for the graphic designer who is producing our season program. This is a fun-filled process during which singers who have not updated their bio or had a new headshot done in several years suddenly decide that they need to do so just after the print deadline has passed. A word of advice to all you singers out there. Get into the habit of regularly updating your bio and also updating your headshot at whatever point you feel it no longer looks even remotely like you. That way, when an overworked general director says that he needs your materials by such and such a date, you can just hit the attach and send commands and everyone is happy, happy, happy. Also, it's a good idea to have several versions of your bio so that you can adhere to any length restrictions that may apply. A bio of between a 150 and 175 words is a very usable thing to have. Much more so than the 800-1000 word CV detailing every prize, concert, scholarship, award, and performance you've had since you were 15 years old. Save that for your tell-all memoir that will be published either during a mid-life crisis or ideally, posthumously. Okay. Got that out of my system. But seriously, singers be prepared with this stuff. No one wants to have to work that hard simply so that you can be listed in the program. Moving right along.
My other rather time-consuming project for August has been the translation of Orpheus in the Underworld for our spring 2008 production. This is my sixth translation for Opera Vivente, and I find that every composer/librettist team presents a slightly different challenge. For Mozart, the Mt. Everest challenge is always those amazing ensemble numbers where several different singers are expressing often very different thoughts, ideas, emotions all within a tightly controlled rhyme scheme. Unfortunately, English is not overflowing with tons of words that rhyme and yet express radically different concepts, unlike say "amore", "rigore" and "orrore" in Italian. With Handel, the issue of when rhyme scheme is important or not always rears its head. Sometimes Handel is quite clearly using the Metastasian poetic forms to create structure in his music and sometimes he's just setting the text from a purely musico-dramatic standpoint. Rhyme scheme be damned in other words. For Signor Puccini, the revelation was that the melody clearly takes precedence over the words. Some scholars have even posited that Puccini might have written some of his greatest melodies well in advance of his librettist supplying the words that Mimi, Tosca, Pinkerton, etc. ultimately sing. When translating Le villi, Puccini's first opera, I just eventually had to accept that long, high notes were often found accompanying words like "the", "it", "and", because in the original Italian, Signor Puccini had those same long, high notes accompanying "la", "il", and "e". It's at this point that one realizes that opera in the vernacular is not just about a more direct communication between stage and audience but also about the insight into a particular composer's aesthetic values. Heady stuff, huh? But now, Msr. Offenbach is the composer in question. Well, there's a number of hurdles with this ribald piece.
Number One - French has no "agogic" accent. This means that a word can be accented on any of its syllables and still be technically correct. Okay, now before all you French linguists show up at my door with lavender-scented torches, beautifully carved battering rams, and explosive devices filled with molten foie gras, I know that I'm somewhat oversimplifying here. But after all, this is a blog not the entrance exam to the Sorbonne. So, taisez-vous, eh? Now the agogic accent thing becomes problematic for translators when composers take this lack of accent as license to set the same word in two different ways. For instance, the character Jupiter's name is set by Offenbach sometimes with the first syllable being accented, and sometimes with the last syllable being accented. Unfortunately, to English speaking people it's always JU-pi-ter, never Ju-pi-TER. This is but one example of the fun and excitement in which I've been engaged over the past month or so.
Number Two - Elision. Both French and Italian have this habit of sometimes using all the syllables of a word and sometimes "eliding" the end of one word into the beginning of the next word to make just a single syllable. Now there are rules that govern this kind of thing, and they are one of the things that upper-level French students sweat bullets over but they also make a translator's life most interesting when he's come up with a really great 8 syllable solution to a line only to find that a page later in the score, Offenbach has elided that same line of text into a 7 syllable line. Yippee!
Number Three - The "difference" between spoken and sung French. There's a legend that says that the many words in French that end with an unaccented schwa (that's the most common vowel in American English by the way, best heard in the ever more present word "duh") only voice that syllable when they are being sung, not spoken. Well someone should tell Msr. Offenbach that because he routinely usese both versions during the singing of these words. For instance, a chorus towards the end of Act I begins with the words "Aux armes" or "To arms". Well the first couple times around, Offenbach uses three notes for this phrase. Therefore I decided to translate it as "To battle". Well, I guess I needed to be knocked down a peg or two because a couple pages later, "Aux armes" is set consistently as a 2 syllable (and therefore 2 note) phrase. So there, we revert to "To arms" as the translation. Neato!
Anyway, these and other hurdles aside, the translation is progressing according to schedule and will be in the hands of singers by the October 1 deadline. I'm also determined to work in more consistent blogging during the last stages of translation so those of you who are eagerly awaiting each new post (I hold fast to the belief that you're out there) won't be disappointed. Best wishes to all of you during the last few days of the most inert month in the calendar, and as always -
See you at the opera!
John Bowen
I'm pleased to report that I've found a carpenter who will build the set for Alcina for the amount that we had originally budgeted. His name is Lewis Shaw and in addition to his set construction skills (an excellent example of which is the Globe-inspired permanent facility at the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival), he is also a fantastic fight-choreographer and one of the countries most sought-after crafter of stage weaponry. I've always been fond of working with "jack of all trades" types, being one myself. So, Lewis will soon be embarking on the realization of Milagros Ponce de Leon's curvilinear, Op-Art inspired set, and I can check one thing off my to-do list. Trouble is, generally when I check something off, I find that two or three items have been added to the bottom of the list in the meantime.
One of the ongoing to-do items is assembling the various text and graphic components for the graphic designer who is producing our season program. This is a fun-filled process during which singers who have not updated their bio or had a new headshot done in several years suddenly decide that they need to do so just after the print deadline has passed. A word of advice to all you singers out there. Get into the habit of regularly updating your bio and also updating your headshot at whatever point you feel it no longer looks even remotely like you. That way, when an overworked general director says that he needs your materials by such and such a date, you can just hit the attach and send commands and everyone is happy, happy, happy. Also, it's a good idea to have several versions of your bio so that you can adhere to any length restrictions that may apply. A bio of between a 150 and 175 words is a very usable thing to have. Much more so than the 800-1000 word CV detailing every prize, concert, scholarship, award, and performance you've had since you were 15 years old. Save that for your tell-all memoir that will be published either during a mid-life crisis or ideally, posthumously. Okay. Got that out of my system. But seriously, singers be prepared with this stuff. No one wants to have to work that hard simply so that you can be listed in the program. Moving right along.
My other rather time-consuming project for August has been the translation of Orpheus in the Underworld for our spring 2008 production. This is my sixth translation for Opera Vivente, and I find that every composer/librettist team presents a slightly different challenge. For Mozart, the Mt. Everest challenge is always those amazing ensemble numbers where several different singers are expressing often very different thoughts, ideas, emotions all within a tightly controlled rhyme scheme. Unfortunately, English is not overflowing with tons of words that rhyme and yet express radically different concepts, unlike say "amore", "rigore" and "orrore" in Italian. With Handel, the issue of when rhyme scheme is important or not always rears its head. Sometimes Handel is quite clearly using the Metastasian poetic forms to create structure in his music and sometimes he's just setting the text from a purely musico-dramatic standpoint. Rhyme scheme be damned in other words. For Signor Puccini, the revelation was that the melody clearly takes precedence over the words. Some scholars have even posited that Puccini might have written some of his greatest melodies well in advance of his librettist supplying the words that Mimi, Tosca, Pinkerton, etc. ultimately sing. When translating Le villi, Puccini's first opera, I just eventually had to accept that long, high notes were often found accompanying words like "the", "it", "and", because in the original Italian, Signor Puccini had those same long, high notes accompanying "la", "il", and "e". It's at this point that one realizes that opera in the vernacular is not just about a more direct communication between stage and audience but also about the insight into a particular composer's aesthetic values. Heady stuff, huh? But now, Msr. Offenbach is the composer in question. Well, there's a number of hurdles with this ribald piece.
Number One - French has no "agogic" accent. This means that a word can be accented on any of its syllables and still be technically correct. Okay, now before all you French linguists show up at my door with lavender-scented torches, beautifully carved battering rams, and explosive devices filled with molten foie gras, I know that I'm somewhat oversimplifying here. But after all, this is a blog not the entrance exam to the Sorbonne. So, taisez-vous, eh? Now the agogic accent thing becomes problematic for translators when composers take this lack of accent as license to set the same word in two different ways. For instance, the character Jupiter's name is set by Offenbach sometimes with the first syllable being accented, and sometimes with the last syllable being accented. Unfortunately, to English speaking people it's always JU-pi-ter, never Ju-pi-TER. This is but one example of the fun and excitement in which I've been engaged over the past month or so.
Number Two - Elision. Both French and Italian have this habit of sometimes using all the syllables of a word and sometimes "eliding" the end of one word into the beginning of the next word to make just a single syllable. Now there are rules that govern this kind of thing, and they are one of the things that upper-level French students sweat bullets over but they also make a translator's life most interesting when he's come up with a really great 8 syllable solution to a line only to find that a page later in the score, Offenbach has elided that same line of text into a 7 syllable line. Yippee!
Number Three - The "difference" between spoken and sung French. There's a legend that says that the many words in French that end with an unaccented schwa (that's the most common vowel in American English by the way, best heard in the ever more present word "duh") only voice that syllable when they are being sung, not spoken. Well someone should tell Msr. Offenbach that because he routinely usese both versions during the singing of these words. For instance, a chorus towards the end of Act I begins with the words "Aux armes" or "To arms". Well the first couple times around, Offenbach uses three notes for this phrase. Therefore I decided to translate it as "To battle". Well, I guess I needed to be knocked down a peg or two because a couple pages later, "Aux armes" is set consistently as a 2 syllable (and therefore 2 note) phrase. So there, we revert to "To arms" as the translation. Neato!
Anyway, these and other hurdles aside, the translation is progressing according to schedule and will be in the hands of singers by the October 1 deadline. I'm also determined to work in more consistent blogging during the last stages of translation so those of you who are eagerly awaiting each new post (I hold fast to the belief that you're out there) won't be disappointed. Best wishes to all of you during the last few days of the most inert month in the calendar, and as always -
See you at the opera!
John Bowen
Labels: accent, agogic, august, bio, carpenter, elision, fight choreographer, handel, headshots, Mozart, offenbach, orange, Puccini, spoken, sung, translation, weaponry
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