Beautifully Odd English

I’m always so used to listening to operas in Italian, French or German, that it’s rather strange when hearing an opera performed in English. Not strange in a negative way, but different. It’s wonderful to be able to (for the most part) understand what is being said without the use of supertitles, but it’s odd to hear English, a language I speak every day sound so foreign to me. I attribute this to the use of crisp consonants, pure vowels and flipped [r]s. It’s a side of the English language that I think most people are not used to hearing on a regular basis. However, in the case of The Aspern Papers, by Dominick Argento, I thought the English lent itself beautiful to the musical style of the composer. The music enhanced the language, and in turn, the language enhanced the music.

There were a few moments when I found some of the word choices quite humorous. The text was taken, for the most part, directly from the novella written by Henry James. When spoken aloud I’m sure that the text would be lovely, but when sung, there were occasions when the flowery language sounded almost out of place. The moments I am referring to made me imagine that the libretto had originally been written in French or Italian, and translated into English. In my mind, this created just a few awkward moments as a result, but as I said before, the composer, who was also the librettist, pulled the text almost directly from the novella.

Aside from those couple of instances where I felt the choice of words was peculiar, I thought Argento composed beautifully for the text and truly communicated its meaning to the audience, something that was exceedingly important to him. While watching the clips I felt completely immersed in what was going on onstage; the text, music, costumes, scenery and especially the lighting was so effective in creating, what I felt, was an appropriate mood, that I would definitely like to see and hear more of this work.