They’re Exquisite. They’re Divine. They’re Incomprehensible. Why?

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/opinion/culture/opera-english-latin-language.html

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I recently had the privilege to receive an honorary degree. The diploma is in Latin. I like that. My Latin is approximate, but even when I can’t read the words, the fact that diplomas are written in a different and antique language gives them an air of distinction, distance, gravitas.

Pondering that effect reminded me that some people feel the same way about how we encounter opera. I couldn’t agree less.

The debate over translation in opera is lively and ongoing, but it’s more relevant than ever today, when opera companies struggle to attract new audiences and digital distractions lure away even some devoted fans. Like the qwerty keyboard, sitting through a three-or-more-hour performance in a language we don’t understand is a peculiar cultural phenomenon we accept only because it’s often the only option we’re given. It’s happenstance. And it’s a big part of what keeps opera from reaching more people.

In the 1800s and well into the 1900s, it was routine in many countries to present operas in the language of the audience. The music critic Anthony Tommasini wrote, “Verdi would have found it absurd for a French audience to hear ‘Il Trovatore’ in Italian. Even in Salzburg and Vienna, Mozart’s operas were typically performed in German until World War II.” Wagner expected his works to be translated into French when they were performed in France.

I wish I regularly had the chance to experience them in my native language. In Act II of “Die Walküre” (“The Valkyrie”) the god Wotan solemnly recounts the “Ring” story and reflects on his fate for what can be 20 minutes of rumination. It is a pitiless challenge to theatrical momentum that wears me to a nubbin. (I once watched it sitting next to a very famous singer I will refrain from naming, who was so underwhelmed that he spent the whole section canoodling with the woman he had brought.) If the performance had been in English, at least the audience members would have been able to comprehend what they were struggling through.

America used to cherish opera in translation. An English version of Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” was a big hit in New York for season after season between 1819 and 1824 and played in French in New Orleans in 1823. But in the Gilded Age, opera caught on with the wealthy as a symbol of European sophistication, conditioning an idea that to really count, it had to be performed in the original language.