I’d like to alert Bay Area readers to the upcoming performances by Berkeley Opera of my two favorite one-acts, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. These two composers are not particularly known for their dramatic works, but each work reveals the composer’s complete mastery of music for the stage. An evening consisting of both of these works is not to be missed.
For the Bartók, I have the privilege of working with the cast of two singers on the nuts and bolts of Hungarian pronunciation, and I’m particularly pleased that Berkeley Opera is using my translation of the libretto for the English supertitles.
I began working on the translation recently after seeing a production that used an old singing translation that was at times incomprehensible, and at times just plain silly. My goal was to stick to the exact meanings line for line in the libretto by Béla Balázs, without sacrificing natural, comprehensible English. It is, in fact, a very tight libretto in a strict eight-syllable-per-line form borrowed from Hungarian folk poetry, and the translations I’ve seen are inappropriately verbose and formal. I hope that audiences will be able to follow the meanings of the words without being distracted by the words themselves.
This Bluebeard will feature the use of a unique, projected image background by Naomie Kremer. It’s difficult to describe here, but it’s very effective, to say nothing of just plain beautiful.
Performances are:
- Saturday, May 3, 8:00 p.m.
- Wednesday, May 7, 7:30 p.m.
- Friday, May 9, 8:00 p.m.
- Sunday, May 11, 2:00 p.m.
At Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College Avenue (at Derby), Berkeley.
More details are on Berkeley Opera’s web site.
