Opera and Languages

 

One of the most complete expressions of art is Opera. According to Britannica, Opera is defined as “ a staged drama set to music entirely, made up of vocal pieces with instrumental accompaniment and usually with orchestral overtures and Interludes ”.  Opera is one of the arts where you need languages.

Most professional opera singers receive training in languages such as Italian, French or German. In a conversation I had with students of the opera program of the University of Toronto, they told me that they even receive preparation in other languages as well, like Russian, Spanish or Czech. 

A lot of people relate this art with the Italian language. There are 2 reasons for this: The first reason is that this art was born in Italy. The first Opera composer was Jacopo Peri. It is believed that the first opera was Dafne, performed in 1598. But most of this work was lost. The oldest surviving opera is Euridice, that was composed by Peri too. 

The second reason is that its terminology, as well as that of Music in general, comes from the Italian language. You can see the use of words like: Allegro, Forte, Vibrato. The word Opera, also comes from Italian, and it means: Work.

Italian was so popular in Opera that not only Italian Composers used it, but non Italians as well. We have the case of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who composed Operas in Italian like Le Nozze di Figaro, (The Marriage of Figaro), Così fan Tutte (All women do it) or Don Giovanni. But it did not take too long to see compositions in other languages. In 1627, appeared the first German opera: Dafne, by Heinrich Schütz (Same name as the earlier composition by Peri).  Less than a century after that, appeared the first Opera in French.

It is considered that the first opera in English was The Siege of Rhodes, performed in 1656, composed by Sir William Davenant. But Opera did not have the same evolution in England. Other forms of Vocal expressions gained more prominence like the Oratorio. Like in Opera, oratorios were split in arias, choruses and musical interludes, but the choral part was more prominent. 

In earlier times, Operas were often translated into the language of the country where it was performed. This had the advantage of being easier for locals to understand the content, and for local singers to perform, without worrying about diction in a foreign language or find out the meaning of the words. After the World War II, there was a shift in preferences, and the tendency was to perform in original language.  Thanks to technology, some Opera presentations have subtitles and more people enjoy those concerts regardless their level of knowledge in the language used.

If we have to make a list of the greatest composers (In Wikipedia, this list has approx 420 names) of Operas in Italian, We might start with Giuseppe Verdi. His first great Opera was Nabucco, released in 1842. Other famous operas were La Traviata, Il Trovatore, and Rigoletto. In 1893, he released his last great masterpiece, Falstaff. We have Giacomo Puccini with his great masterpieces Tosca, La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot (from this composer, I really like Le Villi and Gianni Schicchi, short operas which are not always mention). Gioachino Rossini composed operas like L’italiana in Algeri (The Italian girl in Algiers), Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The barber of Seville) and Mosè in Egitto (Moses in Egypt) among others. Gaetano Donizetti composed Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Pasquale and L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love). The list of Operas is much larger.

In German, it is important to highlight the contributions of Mozart to the development of Operas in this language. He composed Die Zauberflöte (The magic flute) and Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio). Then we have Richard Wagner who composed Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The master singers of Nuremberg). Tanhäuser, Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), Parsifal and many more. We can also shortlist operas like Salome, Der Rosenkavalier, both by Richard Strauss, Fidelio by Ludwig V Beethoven and Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber.

English has its share in the opera world. We can name famous operas such as Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, King Priam by Michael Tippett, The Turn of the Screw and Peter Grimes, both by Benjamin Britten, Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin

Although Opera in Russia arrived later, they created their own group of compositions which are recognized around the world. Among the most famous operas in Russian we have: Boris Godunov (Борис Годунов) by Modest Mussorgsky, The Queen of Spades (Пиковая Дама) by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Khovanshchina (Хованщина) by Mussorgsky, Prince Igor (Князь Игорь) by Alexander Borodin, Sadko (Садко) by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Ruslan and Lyudmila (Руслан и Людмила) by Mikhail Glinka and Eugene Onegin (Евгений Онегин) by Tchaikovsky.

We can find Operas in unusual languages. Some examples are Blodwen by Joseph Parry, sung in Welsh; The Dybbuk ( דער דיבוק ) by Solomon Epstein, sung in Yiddish; Salawat Yulayev by Zagir Ismagilov, sung in Bashkir; Zigor by Francisco Escudero, sung in Basque; But in this category, the first prize is for the Opera Akhnaten by Philip Glass, with arias sung in Old Egyptian, biblical Hebrew and Akkadian. At least the narrator speaks in the local language.

A Window to a Dream

This year, I participated in the event “A Window to a Dream” ( پنجره ای به رویا ). It was a unique experience where I came back to the opera world, met new friends and for the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to perform singing Opera arias translated to a different language, in this case, all songs were in Persian.

There were attempts in the past to make Opera popular in Iran. After 18 years of activity, it ended banned by the Islamic regimen that came to power in 1979. The main reasons of the opposition to this form or art were the secular content of the stories of the main operas, and the participation of Female singers, both were deemed as unacceptable by the new ruling class. A window to a dream is an attempt to retake that effort, but now outside Iran.

I sang as a bass in the choir. We participated in 5 arias singing the chorus part: Habanera (Popular name of the aria L’amour est un oiseau rebelle or “Love is a rebellious bird”, although in Persian you can hear: عشق مثل مرغ وحشی است or “ Eshgh mesle morghe vahshiye”) from the opera Carmen;

Dido’s Lament from the opera Dido and Aeneas; Nessum Dorma from the opera Turandot; Libiamo ne’lieti calici from the opera La Traviata; The 5^th aria was Noor-e Badeh ( نور باده ) from the opera Koroğlu which was the only aria originally composed in Persian, although the rest of the Opera is in Azerbaijani. There were other arias, but sung only by the soloists. Among them I enjoyed O Mio babbino caro from the opera Gianni Schichi and Solveig’s Song from Peer Gynt, both sang by vocalist Golrokh Aminian. Special mention to Largo al Factotum from the opera Il Barbiere di Siviglia, sang by vocalist Farshid Tabloie.

I want to thank Golrokh Aminian for this opportunity to participate in such event that will make history in Persian Arts.