The translation of opera librettos into english: a national and/or meta-operatic issue

Abstract

This article raises the issue of translation in the construction of a national operatic repertoire. As is well-known, the collocation “English opera” could occasionally refer, in particular in the nineteenth century, not to a work composed in Britain by a British composer, but to an opera actually sung to English words. This diachronic examination of several translations into English clearly shows a tendency towards the Anglicisation of continental opera, thus inscribed into the British political, sociological and cultural contexts of the time. Conversely, the English versions of the mainstream repertoire also shows a strong leaning towards a sort of self-referential discourse which, although it does transcend the purely contextual aspects of operatic translation, paradoxically points to the ephemeral nature of the exercise.