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.
A different kind of stylistic problem is presented by the Brecht-Weill ballet Die sieben Todsiinden which is set in a contemporary but mythical America. A contemporary American diction is called for, but it must not be too specifically so or the mythical element will disappear. Thus, while the translation must not contain words which are only used in British English—haus must be translated as home not as house—it would be wrong, although the family are said to live in Louisiana, to translate the German into the speech of American Southerners.
In one chorus the family list various delicious foods.
Hornchen! Schnitzel! Spar gel! Huhnchen! Und die kleinen gelben Honigkiichen
that is:
Muffins! Cudets! Asparagus! Chickens! And those little yellow honey-buns!
Though Americans do eat all of these, they do not make a characteristic list of what Americans, particularly from the South, would think of with the greatest greedy longing. Accordingly, we changed the list to:
Crabmeat! Porkchops! Sweet-corn! Chicken! And those golden biscuits spread with honey!
The images and metaphors characteristic of one culture and language are not always as effective in another. Thus, a literal translation of one of the verses sung by Anna in Lust would go:
And she shows her litde white backside, Worth more than a little factory, Shows it gratis to starers and corner-boys, To the profane look of the world.
The most powerful line in this verse is the second, but, in American English, "a little factory" makes no impact. Some other comparison must be thought of:
Now she shows off her white litde fanny, Worth twice a little Texas motel,
And for nothing the poolroom can stare at Annie As though she'd nothing to sell.
Translating Arias
An aria very rarely contains information which it is essential for the audience to know in order to understand the action and which must, therefore, be translated literally; all that a translation of an aria must do is convey the emotion or conflict of emotions which it expresses. At the same time, the arias in an opera are as a rule its high points musically, so that it is in them that the quality of the translation matters most. So far as an original librettist is concerned, all that matters is that his verses should inspire the composer to write beautiful music, but the translator is in a different position. The music is already there, and it is his duty to make his verses as worthy of it as he can.
Before Wagner and Verdi in his middle years, no composer worried much about the libretto; he took what he was given and did the best he could with it. This was possible because a satisfactory convention had been established as to the styles and forms in which libretti should be written which any competent versifier could master. This meant, however, that, while a composer could be assured of getting a settable text, one libretto was remarkably like another; all originality and interest had to come from the music. Today, it is idle to pretend that we can listen to a Mozart opera with the ears of his contemporaries, as if we had never heard the operas of Wagner, the late Verdi and Strauss in which the libretto plays an important role. In listening to a Mozart opera, we cannot help noticing when the text is banal or silly, or becoming impatient when a line is repeated over and over again. Having the beautiful music in his ears, a modern translator must feel it his duty to make his version as worthy of it as he can.
O Don Ottavio's first aria
Dalla sua pace La mia depende, Quelch'al lei piace Vita mi rende,
Quel che I'incresce Morte mi da. S'ella sospira Sospir' anchio, E mia quell'ira Que pianto & mio, E non ho hene S'ella non I'ha
Upon her peace / my peace depends / what pleases her / grants me life/and what saddens her/gives me death. If she sighs /1 also sigh / mine is her anger / and her grief is mine/I have no joy/if she has none.
When one compares English poetry with Italian or that of any Romance language, one sees that English poetic speech is more concrete in its expressions; an English poet writing a love lyric tends to express his feelings in terms of imagery and metaphors drawn from nature, rather than stating them directly. Further, English and Italian notions of what it is proper for an amorous male to say and do are different. To an English sensibility, Ottavio's exclusive concentration upon himself—she mustn't be unhappy because it makes him unhappy—is a bit distasteful. Lastly, Da Ponte's lyric contains only a single idea repeated over and over again with but slight variations, but Mozart has given his second stanza a completely different musical treatment. Accordingly we tried to write a lyric which should be a) more concrete in diction, b) make Ottavio think more about Donna Anna than himself and c) less repetitive.