Specials

There is a championship that Italy wins every year. There is a place where 2 out of 3 nights Italy wins. There is a field where the lingua franca is Italian and if the champions aren’t Italian they still have to learn the language of Dante.

It’s not soccer, but opera, which continues to echo our language throughout the world and encourage people of all ages to learn Italian, even if only to better appreciate the great operas of the greatest composers of all time.
In the American temple of opera, the Metropolitan Opera Theater of New York—an institution opera fanatics are grateful has been kept alive, even in difficult times—the great operatic traditions live on. In the next season, 16 of the 25 operas to be staged will be in Italian (even if from non Italian composers such as Mozart and Gluck). While there is great anticipation for the new productions and for performances from the most beloved singers in new roles, one thing we know for sure: this year too, once you’ve taken your seat in front of the little display that offers subtitles to the opera (another refined detail exclusive to the Met that we should be grateful for), you will be able to press the button until you find the desired language. The sequence will be: English, Spanish (so far no surprises) and then… German. If you press the button again, the screen pauses and then the sequence begins again: English, Spanish, German… but no trace of Italian.
Now, here is a very simple proposal for the Met’s General Manager, Peter Gelb: why not offer, in addition to the English and the Spanish, the original language track of the libretto of the opera being staged? We’re not asking that Italian be permanently offered but that when an opera is in Italian, the original text would scroll on the screen giving the audience the opportunity to see in writing what it is they are hearing. I’m sure that many people would enjoy this opportunity even if they don’t speak our language fluently. It would be a philologically correct operation and a sign of respect for the deep interpenetration between word and music that is typical of opera. With the understanding that not every Italian libretto is a literary masterpiece (although Da Ponte’s librettos for Mozart certainly are) and that the subtitles at the Met are only a small issue in the extensive field of the promotion of the Italian language in the United States, I believe that, at least symbolically, it would be very meaningful to see the little red dots scrolling and forming the words “oh che gelida manina” instead of “Oh, solch eine kleine, frostige Hand!” over the immortal notes of Puccini.

*Associate Professor of Italian; Director of Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò (New York University)