
La traduction du livret d’opéra vers l’anglais : un enjeu national et/ou « méta-opératique »
Author(s) -
Pierre Degott
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
lisa
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1762-6153
DOI - 10.4000/lisa.2060
Subject(s) - opera , repertoire , humanities , mainstream , art , literature , linguistics , philosophy , theology
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