The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

With such alterations, no musician or musicologist is likely to quarrel. A more controversial matter is syllabification, for some purists consider the original syllabification and slurs to be as sacrosanct as the notes themselves. We believe, however, that there are occasions, at least in libretti written before 1850, when changes in syllabification are justifiable. In the days of Mozart and Rossini, the speed at which operas were expected to be turned out made any studied collaboration between librettist and composer impossible. The librettists produced his verses and the composer set them as best he could; he might ask for an extra aria but not for detailed revisions. The insistence shown by Verdi in his later years, by Wagner and by Strauss upon having a text which exactly matched their musical ideas was unknown. Mozart frequently spreads a syllable over two or more notes, and not in coloratura runs only. In many cases, his reason for doing so was, we believe, quite simple: his musical idea contained more notes than the verse he had been given contained syllables—just as, when he has not been given enough lines for his music, he repeats them.

Now it so happens that in English, on account of its vowels and its many monosyllabic words, there are fewer syllables which sing well and are intelligible when spread over several notes than there are in either Italian or German; English is, intrinsically, a more staccato tongue. The first stanza of the duet between Papageno and Pamina runs thus:

Bei Mannern welche Liebe fiihlen Fehlt auch ein gutes Herze nicht. Die siissen Triebe mitzufiihlen 1st dann des Weibes erste Pflicht.

The rhythm is iambic, that is to say in 4/4 time. But Mozart has set it to a tune in 6/8 time so, to make the words fit, he spreads each accented syllable over two notes linked by a slur. It is, of course, not difficult to write an English iambic quatrain.

When Love his dart has deep implanted, The hero's heart grows kind and tame. And by his passion soon enchanted, The nymph receives the ardent flame.

But, to our ears, this sounded wrong somehow; they kept demanding an anapaestic quatrain which would give one syllable to every note of the melody.

When Love in his bosom desire has implanted, The heart of the hero grows gentle and tame. And soon by his passion enkindled, exchanged, The nymph receives the impetuous flame.

This, of course, involves doing away with the slurs in the score, and some purists may object. One can only ask singers to sing both iambic and anapaestic versions several times with­out prejudice and then ask themselves which, in English, sounds the more Mozartian.

All such details which demand the translator's attention are part of the more general and important problem of finding the right literary style for any given opera. The kind of diction suitable to an opera seria, for example, is unsuitable in an opera buff a, nor can a supernatural character like the Queen of the Night use the speech of a courtesan like Violetta. In deciding upon a style for a particular opera, the translator has to trust his intuition and his knowledge of the literature, both in the original tongue and in his own, of the period in which the opera is supposed to be set. While he must obviously avoid solecisms, the literary traditions of any two languages are so different that a puristic exactness is often neither necessary nor even desirable; it does not follow that the best equivalent for the Italian spoken and written in 1790 is the English spoken in that year.

Scene Five of Don Giovanni shows the peasants dancing. Zerlina sings:

Giovinette, che fate, all'amore, che fate, all'amore, Non lasciate, che passi I'eta, Che passi I'eta, Che passi I'eta. Se nel seno vi bulica il core, bulica il core, II rimedio vedetelo qua. Che piacer, che piacer, che sara.

Given the character of the music, it seemed to us that the natural English equivalent was not something late-eighteenth- century like Da Ponte's Italian, but Elizabethan pastoral.

Pretty maid with your graces adorning the dew-spangled

morning,

The red rose and the white fade away, Both wither away, All fade in a day.

Of your pride and unkindness relenting, to kisses

consenting,

All the pains of your shepherd allay.

As the cuckoo flies over the may.