
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 18, 1994                   TAG: 9405180061
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE SCIENCE OF SUPERTITLES

The advent of supertitles in recent years in the opera world has meant an easy solution to an old problem: how to stage operas in their original languages without alienating a potentially huge audience that speaks only English.

Producing an opera in translation has always involved a trade-off: You get words your audience can understand, but you sometimes sacrifice the intimate relationship between the original words and the music, a syntactical marriage that purists are loath to put asunder. Supertitles offer a chance to have the best of both worlds.

You might think that producing a set of supertitles would be easy. Just translate the libretto and project the translation, word for word, as the opera's action unfolds, right?

Not so. Supertitles generally must be more concise than the original text so that concertgoers can give most of their attention to what's happening on stage without feeling they must keep their eyes glued to the title screen.

Paul Zweifel, who is a University Distinguished Professor and director of Virginia Tech's Center for Transport Theory in Mathematical Physics, as well as an opera buff, has given a lot of thought to what makes for a successful set of supertitles.

``I've traveled quite a bit, and I've looked at a lot of operas with supertitles, in Freiburg, Germany, in London. I've tried to get a feeling for just how many words you can put on a line and just how much time you had to leave them up so that the audience can grasp them,'' said Zweifel.

``It's hard, especially in Act II [of `The Marriage of Figaro'], where the words come out so fast. I don't know how many times I had to sit there with my score ... trying to make it all fit.''

Zweifel has the benefit of being a singer himself as well as a fluent speaker of Italian. As a result, he has been able to craft a set of English supertitles for ``Figaro'' that are in rhyme when the Italian text is rhymed, and in prose when the original is in prose. He is currently working on a set of supertitles for next season's production of ``Rigoletto'' as well.

``The experimental part is using poetic supertitles; I'm nervous about detracting from the action on stage, so I've tried to be as faithful to the original text as possible.''

Nevertheless, in a few spots Zweifel has taken liberties to match Craig Fields' 1930's setting. When the gardener Antonio indignantly protests that it couldn't have been Figaro who jumped from the Countess's bedroom window in Act II (it was actually Cherubino), Zweifel's supertitles will read:

Antonio: The man who jumped was very small; You've gotten fat, I think.

Figaro: You know what Albert Einstein says: That moving objects shrink.

by CNB