NPR: In 1983, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto tried a grand experiment. While the singers performed Elektra in German onstage, simultaneous translations in English were projected above the stage. These "supertitles," as they've come to be known, were quickly adopted at opera houses and are now an expected part of the opera-going experience.
3 comments:
One thing I wonder is how supertitles effect the look of the show? Do designers get upset with the stage picture they worked very hard to create is interrupted? I feel that this could be a place for greater collaboration where media designers and other designers have to talk but also I could very easily see old-time designers who didn’t grow up designing sets with sub or supertitles could become very upset. I give great kudos to people like Mansouri who have to deal with operagoers constantly being upset by the super titles. It must be extremely difficult to be doing a job, presumably something a person loves doing and being yelled at by fans of opera. I’m sure I will probably face similar situations while working on avant-garde work but I think it is different when theatergoers criticize work verse when theatre lovers criticize the work of theatre practitioners. I am intrigued by when the article talks about how some people see opera just because it is a mystery to figure out. I think being a little confused and having sometimes just appreciated art for art is hard when making a decision of what to spend money when it comes to seeing a show in English or an opera but now at CMU with the availability of free and cheap opera, I am understanding how fun it is to see art for the sake of art and mystery.
As someone who goes to opera fairly often and has seen both the supertitles used and the individual subtitles used in different ways, I personally don't mind the supertitles, especially if they're not glaringly bright or overbearing. I can sort of see how some people might have been off put by them early on, especially if you'd never seen supertitles before or weren't expecting them, but with people so used to them now I think there's a lot more acceptance. I do wonder how they work supertitles and subtitling when there are mixed-language audiences coming to a supertitles performance - would that be handled on a case-by-case basis, or is there an individual system for those exact reasons? I also wonder how you could incorporate the supertitles into the show in a more artistic way than simply a projection above the opera. Maybe there could be cool ways to project onto the set or make the subtitles more visually cohesive with the design of the rest of the show?
There was another article this week about the current difficulties that opera is having in today's market, and I think supertitles are actually a great way to draw more than just the traditional opera audience. I remember learning about opera in 5th or 6th grade and wondering how anyone could sit through an entire show and not understand a word of what the people onstage were saying. To me, opera with supertitles is like going to see a foreign movie and it being subtitled; it gives the audience more understanding of what is going on, and, to me, lets them engage more in the performance as a whole rather than spend time trying to decipher the story line. I do think there could be more creative ways to incorporate them into the set if desired, but I have seen a good bit of opera in the past few years and never once have I been distracted or bothered by the "design" of the supertitles, so perhaps it is best to leave them more plain so that they almost fade into nonexistence. To me, supertitles are there for when the audience wants to see them, but should almost disappear when the audience does not.
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