The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: On the Functional Approach to Translating Libretti for Modernised Opera Productions

Abstract

The present paper focuses on the issue of translating operatic libretti in the form of surtitles. This is a very specific type of translation, and it becomes even more challenging when operatic productions for which surtitles are created are modernised. In such cases the application of skopos theory proves to be the most useful and effective, even though some of its premises may be regarded as controversial. The data for the present study come from the most reputable opera houses, for example the Metropolitan Opera House or Royal Opera House, as they are known for providing their audiences with high-quality libretti translations.

Canonical texts in the audiovisual context: surtitlingEugene Oneginfor Polish audiences

“…This line of argumentation is observed in the conclusions drawn by Virkkunen (2004), who discussed the problems of the source text in surtitling, as well as Page (2013) and Palmer (2013), both working for the Royal Opera House and offering in-house expertise, or Rędzioch-Korkuz (2016), who resorted to the semiotics of opera in order to underline the artistic harmony of the operatic text. The integrity of surtitles and the performance seems to be especially visible in the case of modernised productions, which was lately observed by Abraitienė et al (2015) and Ożarowska (2017), all of whom emphasised the significance of the theory of relevance and functional approaches in such cases.…”