Chandos' courageous and innovative series Opera in English has successfully tackled some of the most translation-resistant operas in the repertoire, such as Dialogues des Carmélites and operas by Janácek, but Pelléas et Mélisande represents a challenge of another order. Debussy's setting of the text is so driven by the natural inflections of the French language that a performance in translation seems almost sacrilegious, if not downright impossible to pull off persuasively. This translation by Hugh MacDonald is successful, ...
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Chandos' courageous and innovative series Opera in English has successfully tackled some of the most translation-resistant operas in the repertoire, such as Dialogues des Carmélites and operas by Janácek, but Pelléas et Mélisande represents a challenge of another order. Debussy's setting of the text is so driven by the natural inflections of the French language that a performance in translation seems almost sacrilegious, if not downright impossible to pull off persuasively. This translation by Hugh MacDonald is successful, though. It requires some fiddling with Debussy's vocal lines, but it's minimally intrusive and is done without disrupting the musical fabric, and it flows naturally. Unless one is absolutely fluent in the language in which an opera is written, hearing it in one's native language (when done as well as Chandos' versions are) almost inevitably increases rather than diminishes the opera's dramatic impact. (It also depends on the quality of the libretto; a silly libretto is going to sound...
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