The Languages Of Opera - OPERA America

Theatergoers think twice about attending a performance in a language that is not their own; for opera audiences, that is the norm. The standard repertoire is heavily weighted toward works in Italian, German, and French. Following the widespread adoption of titling systems in the early 1980s, nearly all U.S. opera companies now perform operas in their original languages with English supertitles. The repertoire does, of course, include some works with English-language librettos, and the expanding interest in presenting new opera has resulted in an even larger body of English-language works.

However, as opera companies start to think more broadly about their audiences and how the art form can be more accessible to more people, new discussions about language have begun. In recognition of the substantial Hispanic and Latinx-heritage population of the U.S., more Spanish-language operas are being presented. Creators are making artistic choices to write operas in nontraditional languages. Advances in technology mean that titling systems are not limited to a single language and can be customized based on individual communities. The pandemic has also produced some reckonings about access, and the ease and success of using multiple titling languages on the digital offerings created over the last two years has led organizations to expand those options in live performance.

Opera in Spanish, Hawaiian, and More

For some companies, considering language for Latinx audiences is nothing new. Florida Grand Opera has used bilingual Spanish and English proscenium titles since 1999, and the company has a substantial library of specially commissioned Spanish translations. “English is on the left, Spanish on the right,” says Susan Danis, the company’s general director and CEO. “We have long-time subscribers who insist on seats on the right because they prefer the Spanish titles.”

For the 2022–2023 season, Danis has gone one step further: a Spanish adaptation of Domenico Cimarosa and Giovanni Bertati’s Il matrimonio segreto. Danis got the idea in a beauty salon, where she overheard the squabbles of a Cuban family getting ready for a wedding. She enlisted Puerto Rican-born director Crystal Manich to trim and adapt the story, aided by “a Cuban American posse of women of different ages to get the right cultural sensitivity.” Reworked as a tale of entrepreneurial Cubans in Miami Beach in the 1980s, the opera, given the slightly altered title El Matrimonio Secreto, was translated by Dominican conductor Darwin Aquino and Italian mezzo-soprano Benedetta Orsi.

A handful of original Spanish-language operas, such as Mexican composer Daniel Catán and Marcela Fuentes-Berain’s Florencia en el Amazonas and Astor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer’s tango opera María de Buenos Aires, have also become go-to pieces at some U.S. companies. General Director David Bennett mounted both at San Diego Opera in 2017. He explains that when the company almost closed back in 2014, “the community stood up and wanted the opera to be here, so when I arrived, I thought about how we could welcome all of the community.” Spanish-language opera was an obvious choice in this majority-minority community.

San Diego Opera also has presented mariachi operas, a project that started with Houston Grand Opera’s commissioning of Cruzar la Cara de la Luna by Jose “Pepe” Martínez and Leonard Foglia in 2010. The production has been successful in numerous communities around the U.S. San Diego co-commissioned the third piece in the series, a Christmas-themed story called El Milagro del Recuerdo.

In October, San Diego will present the world premiere of Gabriela Lena Frank and Nilo Cruz’s El Último Sueño del Frida y Diego. The screen of its current titling system is too small to allow for bilingual supertitles, but Bennett hopes to invest soon in a new system that will have more capacity. The majority of Spanish speakers who attend performances are bilingual; however, Bennett says, “We’ve learned that Hispanic people feel more respected and connected to organizations that acknowledge the Spanish language.”