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Translating Gluck’s Paris Operas to the Colonial Caribbean and Contemporary Britain
Abstract:
Few opera composers were more acutely aware of the vagaries of translating a work from one culture to another than Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-87), who is described as the first “truly international opera composer” (Howard) and who famously turned his Orfeo ed Euridice into Orphée et Eurydice for performance at the Paris Opera. Here I would like to examine two further translations of Gluck’s work: first, the performances of his Paris operas in the colonial Caribbean only a few years after their Paris premieres and, more recently, my own experiences preparing an English translation of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride for performance in St Andrews, Scotland. According to the local press, the colonial performances of Gluck operas were as close to the Paris productions as local conditions allowed; in practice, of course, they were very different. And even the elements that were purportedly the same may of course have taken on significant new meanings in their next context. Most significantly and most subtly, Gluck’s operas were changed owing to the particular social and especially racial dynamics at work in the colonial playhouse where a disproportionately small number of free people of colour were admitted to special seats. Likewise, translating Guillard’s libretto from 18th-century French to 21st-century English required a delicate negotiation between accuracy, intelligibility and discreet modernization. Setting, for example, the first solo appearance of a singer of colour in a Gluck opera (in Saint-Domingue) alongside our attempts to avoid having a homoerotic relationship (mis)read by a 21st-century audience as necessarily also a homosexual one will shed light on the process of different types of translation across different cultures and centuries, and on the transgressions that can arise along the way.
Dr Julia Prest, University of St Andrews
A graduate in Music and French, Julia Prest wrote her PhD on Molière’s comedy-ballets at the University of Cambridge. Currently Reader in Early-Modern French at the University of St Andrews, she has published widely on various aspects of French drama, ballet and opera. Alongside numerous articles and two critical editions, she has published two monographs: Theatre under Louis XIV: Cross-Casting and the Performance of Gender in Drama, Ballet and Opera (Palgrave, 2006; 2013) and Controversy in French Theatre: Molière’s Tartuffe and the Struggle for Influence (Palgrave, 2014; 2016). She is currently working on a monograph on politics and practices in the theatres of colonial Saint-Domingue (now Haïti). Julia has previously held academic positions at the Universities of Oxford (1999-2002) and Yale (2002-09). Her honours course on Translating French Opera recently featured in an article in the Times Higher: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/university-of-saint-andrews-campus-close-up
- Speaker
- Dr Julia Prest, University of St Andrews
- Hosted by
- Modern Language / Music
- Venue
- The Sir Duncan Rice Library, Room 711
- Contact
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Free and open to the public