Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros26Dossier Université Invitée: GenèveAu-delà de l’écritOperatic Forays into Translation ...

Dossier Université Invitée: Genève
Au-delà de l’écrit

Operatic Forays into Translation Studies: Translation, Adaptation and Rossini’s Otello

Incursions opératiques en traductologie : traduction, adaptation dans l’Otello de Rossini
Cuando la ópera se infiltra en la traductología: traducción, adaptación y Otello de Rossini
Danielle Thien

Résumés

Cet article explore les liens entre la traductologie et les études d’opéra à partir de l’exemple de l’Otello de Rossini. Dans un premier temps, il révèle la tendance des critiques à décider du succès d’un opéra en fonction de sa correspondance avec la pièce de Shakespeare. Il est en particulier possible d’établir un parallèle entre, d’une part, le langage qu’utilisent ces critiques pour décrire la relation entre la pièce et l’opéra et, d’autre part, le langage de certaines approches sourcières en traductologie qui se sont révélées problématiques. Dans un second temps, cet article montre en quoi cette perception de l’opéra par rapport à la pièce est trompeuse, étant donné que le librettiste de l’opéra, Francesco Berio di Salsa, ne connaissait pas l’anglais et a donc été contraint de se tourner vers une adaptation française, une adaptation italienne et, probablement, une traduction italienne. Or, les compétences en anglais des auteurs de cette traduction et de ces adaptations étaient insuffisantes, et ils ont également dû s’appuyer sur des traductions ou adaptations antérieures, ce qui rend le réseau intertextuel au cœur de cette étude encore plus complexe. Bien que le mot « traduction » ait souvent été utilisé pour décrire la relation entre la pièce de Shakespeare et l’opéra de Rossini, la façon dont la traduction est concrètement intervenue dans ce processus de transformation a rarement été analysée. Cet article souligne la nécessité d’examiner les enjeux de traduction afin de mieux élucider la relation entre l’opéra et ses sources littéraires, démontrant dans quelle mesure une approche descriptive permettrait, mieux qu’une approche prescriptive, de prendre en compte les spécificités liées au genre et au contexte esthétique qui ont donné lieu à chaque texte. L’étude du rôle de la traduction dans la création des livrets pourrait à la fois contribuer au développement du champ interdisciplinaire de l’opéra et de la traduction, et enrichir ces deux domaines de recherche.

Haut de page

Texte intégral

  • 1 James Aldrich-Moodie, “False Fidelity: ‘Othello, Otello’, And Their Critics”, Comparative Drama, Vo (...)

1After attending the Venetian premiere of Rossini’s new opera Otello, Lord Byron famously declared, “They have been crucifying Othello into an opera.”1 That a man of Byron’s literary caliber should be so concerned with comparing opera to the play may come as little surprise, and yet Rossini’s critics, both contemporary and modern-day, would continue to express similar sentiments.

  • 2 In “Introduction,” Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (eds.), Reading Opera, Princeton, Princeton Univer (...)

2Although opera libretti have long been held in contempt “as something sub-literary and intrinsically uninteresting,”2 those that reprise the subjects of Shakespeare’s plays have garnered more interest. No doubt this is due to the particular status that Shakespeare holds in the literary canon, as Gautier seems to suggest in his review of an 1844 revival of Rossini’s opera in Paris:

  • 3 Id., p. 7.

In effect, what do the syllables matter that the poor poet-librettist has grouped in lines or in stanzas! Surely nothing is more immaterial; and yet when this poet is the great William Shakespeare – no more, no less – the case is more serious.3

  • 4 For a brief overview of how Monteverdi’s operatic works led to operas being considered a primarily (...)
  • 5 For the purposes of this paper, I will be focusing on modern-day discourse surrounding these operas (...)

3Although most listeners would agree that music generally takes primacy over the words of an opera,4 a libretto that takes on a Shakespearean subject must be subject to more scrutiny. Time and again, critics and scholars5 have demonstrated the tendency to evaluate an opera based on a Shakespeare play in terms of its correspondence to the play, however that correspondence might be measured. As Dean points out, they are quick to ignore the particular aesthetic context in which the opera was conceived:

  • 6 Winton Dean, “Shakespeare and Opera” in Phyllis Hartnoll (ed.), Shakespeare in Music, London, Macmi (...)

In surveying the field of Shakespearean opera it is necessary to fly in the face of aesthetic convention and apply a double standard. We must judge how far an opera takes the measure of the play on which it is based.6

  • 7 Indeed, a comprehensive survey of operas based on Shakespearean subjects (see Dean p. 96-175) unsur (...)

4Besides not taking into account certain musical traditions that may have played a significant role in shaping these operas, the majority of critics and scholars also tend to overlook one fact that could call into question the entire basis for weighing the opera against the play: the composers and their librettists may have had little or no knowledge of English; lacking any direct access to Shakespeare’s plays, they would instead have had to work by way of translations and adaptations.7 Rossini’s Otello is a particularly complex case, as the composer and his librettist, the Baron Francesco Berio di Salsa, likely worked with at least one translation and two adaptations, and the translator and adapters in turn had no understanding of English and had to work with other translations and adaptations. This tangled textual genealogy results in an opera that not only has no direct relationship with the play, but is several times removed from it. Given the complex literary circumstances in which the opera was conceived, it can be of little wonder that Rossini and Berio di Salsa so “crucified” Shakespeare’s play.

  • 8 Aldrich-Moodie makes this same observation when looking specifically at the discourse on Verdi and (...)
  • 9 A thorough analysis of the transformation process would evidently also have to take into considerat (...)

5Although these so-called Shakespearean operas are often referred to as “translations,”8 the actual issues of translation have rarely been examined, as scholars and critics have focused primarily on broad textual features such as character and plot, as opposed to more specific linguistic details. Curiously, however, the language used by opera critics closely resembles the rhetoric of source-oriented approaches to translation – a rhetoric that has often been criticized for its normative attitude and has notably led to the development of more descriptive approaches to translation criticism. Using Rossini’s Otello as a case study, this paper proposes to first examine the discourse of opera scholars and critics and to draw a parallel with the discourse in translation studies. It then provides an overview of the translations and adaptations that were used in the genesis of Otello, demonstrating that while “translation” has often been employed as a metaphor to describe the relationship between opera and play, the real issues of translation have consistently been overlooked. Ultimately, this article advocates for a closer analysis of the translations involved in order to provide a better understanding of the transition from literary text to operatic text9. It also proposes moving away from the prescriptive language that revolves around an idealization of the source text and turning instead to the tools of descriptive translation studies to better take into account all the different factors that may have shaped each work. Such an undertaking would both bridge the gap between two disciplines as well as expand upon each of them.

The critical discourse surrounding Rossini’s opera

  • 10 Frédéric Vitoux, Gioacchino Rossini, Paris, Mazarine, 1982, p. 198; my translation.
  • 11 John W. Klein, “Verdi’s ‘Otello’ and Rossini’s,” Music & Letters, vol. 45, number 2, April 1964, p. (...)
  • 12 Id., p. 131.

6We will begin our analysis by examining the metaphors that have arisen in the language of critics in their assessment of Rossini’s Otello. The first is the notion of destruction and deformation. Vitoux, for instance, describes how “the play had been decidedly deformed and massacred.”10 Klein expresses similar sentiments, referring to the “mutilation of the drama”11 and the “degrading [of] one of Shakespeare’s greatest works to the level of a crude and unconvincing melodrama.”12 Both critics employ strong language that propagates the image of a violence having been committed against the “original” work.

  • 13 James Aldrich-Moodie, “False Fidelity: ‘Othello, Otello’, And Their Critics”, art. cit., p. 324-347
  • 14 Id., p. 325.
  • 15 Id., p. 324.

7In the writings of critics of Otello, there is not only the idea of a physical violation, but also of an emotional violation, which brings us to the second metaphor I would like to discuss: the metaphor of fidelity, or more specifically, of infidelity. The rhetoric of infidelity has been explored in detail by Aldrich-Moodie, who examines the issue not only in relation to Rossini’s Otello, but also Verdi’s Otello.13 He provides a detailed survey of what he describes as “the language of sexual corruption”14 that has characterized criticism of these operatic works. According to him, the operas are not only portrayed as unfaithful, but are also ascribed a particular gender role: “the operas (like Desdemona) are caught between either praise for their ‘faithful adherence’ to Shakespeare (Othello) or condemnation as ‘debased’ goods.”15 There is therefore both a moral judgment as well as a gender bias vis-à-vis these operas.

  • 16 John W. Klein, “Verdi’s ‘Otello’ and Rossini’s,” art. cit., p. 132-133.
  • 17 Id., p. 133.

8In addition to metaphors that describe a sexual and moral inferiority, if we turn back to Klein’s article, we can also identify language that points to a cultural inferiority. For example, he likens Rossini’s Otello to “an inane French drawing-room farce” and a “most sordid kind of ‘conte de Barbe-Bleue.’”16 He accuses the composer and his librettists of “[c]ompletely ignoring Shakespeare [and] partly revert[ing] to the primitive, and this time really ‘barbarous’, Cinzio Giraldi.”17 As the latter was the central work that inspired Shakespeare’s play, it does not seem unjustified to use it as a model, especially as it is written in the same language as the opera, and yet it would appear that when it comes to a text’s status, its position in the literary canon is valued over antecedence. Such discourse clearly posits Shakespeare and his plays in a position of cultural superiority – and, I would argue, seems to hint at a perceived higher quality of English literature over French or Italian literature. Furthermore, an Orientalist-like attitude towards the Italian tale, and by extension, the Italian opera, can be discerned in the words “primitivity” and “barbarity.”

  • 18 Edgar Istel and Theodore Baker, “The ‘Othello’ of Verdi and Shakespeare,” The Musical Quarterly, Vo (...)

9Regardless of whether we’re talking about destruction, distortion, infidelity, or barbarity, what all these different types of discourse have in common is that they establish a certain relationship between the opera and the play – one that systematically puts the opera in a lesser position with respect to the play. Even when elements of the opera are perceived as being similar to elements in the play, the language that is used to describe them is far from complimentary. Istel and Baker, for instance, claim that Rossini’s fourth act is “imitated from Shakespeare” and labels it a “copy.”18 In the words “imitation” and “copy” there is inevitably the suggestion of inadequacy; a “copy” can never have the same value as the “original.”

  • 19 Frédéric Vitoux, Gioacchino Rossini, op. cit., p. 198. My translation.
  • 20 Edgar Istel and Theodore Baker, “The ‘Othello’ of Verdi and Shakespeare,” art. cit., p. 375.
  • 21 John W. Klein, “Verdi’s ‘Otello’ and Rossini’s,” art. cit., p. 133.
  • 22 Roberta Marvin, “Shakespeare and Primo Ottocento Italian Opera: The Case of Rossini’s Otelloin Ho (...)

10It is not only the operatic work itself that has come under attack; Berio di Salsa, as the author of the libretto, has also been subject to much censure. He has been called an “occasional librettist,”19 an “easy-going librettist,”20 an “aristocratic librettist”21 and an “amateur poet.”22 The fact that all three critics do not simply refer to Berio di Salsa as a “librettist” but feel the need to qualify his role would seem to speak to a desire to account for the poor quality and, above all, “unfaithfulness” of his libretto.

  • 23 Stendhal perfectly illustrates this attitude, claiming that “nobody gives a damn for the librettist (...)

11Considering that the words of opera in general are so often dismissed,23 it is curious that the librettist and his text have taken the brunt of the blame for the opera’s breach with Shakespeare. However, the perpetual preoccupation with the literary quality of this particular libretto again reflects a certain reverence for Shakespeare, which hinders the ability to conceive of the opera as an independent work. There is a sacralization of the source that we would rarely encounter in other operas, many of which have long since surpassed the fame of their literary predecessor.

Correlations with translation studies

  • 24 Mark Shuttleworth and Moira Cowie, ‘Source Text-oriented Translation Studies,’ Dictionary of Transl (...)

12When examining the discourse above, what may immediately strike researchers in translation studies is that musicologists and opera critics have approached Rossini’s opera much in the way that source-oriented critics have often approached translations. There is an expectation that “certain ST [source text] features are […] to be reproduced in [the] TT [target text]”24.

  • 25 Andrew Chesterman, Memes of Translation: The spread of ideas in translation theory, Amsterdam, John (...)
  • 26 James Aldrich-Moodie, “False Fidelity: ‘Othello, Otello’, And Their Critics,” art. cit., p. 324.

13Rossini and Berio di Salsa’s critics are in search of a “sameness” between the opera and the play, but “[e]xactly what this ‘sameness’ consists of is, of course, open to endless debate”25. What is it that these critics are looking to find in the opera? Is it Shakespeare’s characters? His plot details? His language? Or something that can only be expressed in vague terms as the “spirit”26 of his play? Regardless of what the criteria may be, these critics are inevitably dissatisfied when they fail to find Shakespeare in Rossini, and in some cases, are even incensed.

14How they express their dissatisfaction is once again bound to resonate with translation studies scholars, for some of the source-oriented discourse that is often used to talk about translation is mirrored in the words of these opera scholars. Notably, it is a rhetoric that is not only prevalent in the history of translation, but has also proved to be problematic.

  • 27 Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, ‘gender’, Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, third ed (...)
  • 28 Lori Chamberlain, “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation,” Signs, Volume 13, number 3, Spring 1 (...)

15Take, for example, the feminization of the opera with respect to the play. In a similar manner, “translation has been represented as a feminized activity in a way that systematically devalues it.”27 To illustrate the gendering and sexualization of translation, Chamberlain refers to the well-known term “belles infidèles”: “the ‘unfaithful’ wife/translation is publicly tried for crimes the husband/original is by law incapable of committing.”28 Likewise, while Otello may be maligned for its betrayal, few would dare say the same thing about Othello, although Shakespeare’s play was itself derived from other sources.

16In post-colonial translation studies, the language of colonialism and the parallel that can be drawn with the source-target relationship has also been explored:

  • 29 Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (eds.), Post-Colonial Translation, London, Routledge, 1999.

The notion of the colony as a copy or translation of the great European Original inevitably involves a value judgement that ranks the translation in a lesser position in the literary hierarchy. The colony, by this definition, is therefore less than its colonizer, its original.29

17In the case of the opera and the play, we are evidently dealing with the output of two European countries, and not with a colonized nation, but when Klein compares the opera to a rustic folktale and claims that the opera is based on the “barbaric” and “primitive” Cinzio tale, he appears to oppose the Civilized to the Other, thereby falling into a rapport akin to the “literary hierarchy” referenced above.

  • 30 Mark Shuttleworth and Moira Cowie, “fidelity,” Dictionary of Translation Studies, op. cit., p. 157.
  • 31 Shuttleworth and Cowie, “Source Text-oriented Translation Studies,” art. cit., p. 158.

18But of all the metaphors that have been cited, it is the metaphor of fidelity that most closely connects Rossini’s critics to translation scholars. After all, “the concept of fidelity has probably been the most basic and widely used yardstick for measuring translation quality.”30 Thinking in terms of fidelity inevitably necessitates a source-text oriented perspective and leads to the perception of “all TTs as inadequate reflections of their STs.”31 The same can be said when applying the notion of fidelity to opera; we cannot use fidelity as the gauge of an opera’s success without imposing a value judgment.

  • 32 Andrew Chesterman, Memes of Translation, op. cit., p. 4.

19At the end of the day, whether we are talking about a source and a target, or an original and a translation, there is a consensus that “translation is directional, going from somewhere to somewhere.”32 I would add that there is also the implication that this movement from one text to the other is direct. However, as I am about to demonstrate in the next section of this study, the same cannot be said of Rossini’s opera.

20From a theoretical perspective, it may be interesting to consider whether or not an opera can be considered a “translation” of a play, or whether another term such as “adaptation” or “transposition” would be more fitting; but when it comes to Othello and Otello, the fact that “translation” presupposes a direct connection between opera and play does not accurately reflect the relationship between the two works. While it may be interesting that Rossini’s critics have adopted a language strikingly close to the language of translation critics, I would argue that they have often ignored the real and very significant issues of translation that are involved.

The literary genealogy of Otello

i. The question of Berio’s sources

21In order to better understand the multiple layers of text that eventually gave rise to Rossini’s opera, I propose to now reconstruct the different steps involved in the literary genesis of the opera. Moving backwards from the opera, what immediately strikes us is that Berio used not one, but several sources in the composition of his libretto.

  • 33 Roberta Marvin, “Shakespeare and Primo Ottocento Italian Opera,” art. cit., p. 75.
  • 34 Mark Shuttleworth and Moira Cowie, “adaptation,” Dictionary of Translation Studies, op. cit., p. 3.

22One of the scholars who has looked into the question of Berio’s sources most extensively is Marvin, who provides a list of all the French and Italian translations and adaptations that existed at the time that Berio was working on his libretto. She whittles them down based on the likelihood of Berio having had access to each work, ultimately arriving at the conclusion, that the Baron must have worked with two sources: Jean-François Ducis’s Othello (1792) and Carlo Cosenza’s Otello, azione patetica in cinque atti (1813)33. It is worth noting that both of these works reinvent the tale of Othello to such an extent that they cannot be considered as translations, but adaptations, which may be defined as “any TT in which a particularly free translation strategy has been adopted,” and which “usually implies that considerable changes have been made in order to make the text more suitable for a specific audience.”34

  • 35 Michael Collins (ed.), Otello, ossia Il Moro di Venezia: dramma per musica in tre atti di Francesco (...)
  • 36 Roberta Marvin, “Shakespeare and Primo Ottocento Italian Opera,” art. cit., p. 75.
  • 37 Michael Collins (ed.), Otello, ossia Il Moro di Venezia, op. cit., p. xxiv. My translation.

23In the introduction to a 1994 edition of the opera score, Collins challenges Marvin’s theory that Berio only worked with the two adaptations, making a case for a third source: Michele Leoni’s 1814 translation.35 Marvin dismisses the translation as a possible source, arguing that Berio, who lived in Naples, likely had not yet come into contact with the translation at the time, as it was published in Florence and initially was not well-received.36 Collins, on the other hand, thinks it feasible that the Baron could have read the translation “taking into account the dedication, and Berio’s social status and devotion to Shakespeare.”37 He does not, however, provide any textual proof that may tie the translation to the opera.

  • 38 Id., p 77.
  • 39 Ibid.

24As for Marvin, while she does a convincing job of demonstrating how Ducis and Cosenza’s plays had an influence on the libretto, she tends to focus on large-scale aspects of the musical text, including “major alterations in dramatic structure, number and roles of characters [and] plot details.”38 She does touch on certain “textual phrases”39 that she considers to have been borrowed from Ducis or Cosenza, but her central focus is not on the language of the libretto. Taking a closer look at the latter and comparing it to the language of the adaptations and translation could perhaps provide insight into whether or not Berio did indeed use a third source.

  • 40 Id., p. xxx.
  • 41 See Luigi Ferrari, Le Traduzioni Italiane del Teatro Tragico Francese nei Secoli XVII° e XVIII°, Ge (...)

25As Collins points out, we might also question whether Berio worked with Ducis’ play in the original French, or if he instead worked with an Italian translation.40 After all, there did exist a translation of Ducis’s play by a certain Celestino Massucco, which was published in 1800,41 but the translation would have to be examined in more detail to either corroborate or disprove this theory.

26Curiously, while the adaptations involved in this initial part of our literary genealogy have been analyzed in more detail, the possible involvement of translation, which is not inconceivable given the linguistic shift from French to Italian, has merely been glossed over or ignored altogether.

ii. Ducis’ 1792 French adaptation

  • 42 Martine de Rougemont, « Un rendez-vous manqué : Shakespeare et les Français au XVIIIème siècle », i (...)

27Ducis has been subject to much of the same outrage and scorn as Rossini and Berio, with one critic referring to him as “the great adapter or corrupter of Shakespeare.”42 His breach with Shakespeare can perhaps be accounted for if we read his introduction; while he does pay homage to the Bard, it soon becomes apparent that Ducis’ loyalties lie above all with his audience. In particular he expresses concerns with regard to their perception of Iago’s character:

  • 43 Jean-François Ducis, « Avertissement », Othello ou Le More de Venise, Paris, Chez André, 1799. My t (...)

I am persuaded that while the English may have been able to serenely observe the manipulations of such a monster on stage, the French public could not even for a minute have tolerated his presence, let alone observe the full development and depth of his villainy.43

28There is the notion that what may be appropriate for the English public is entirely inappropriate for the French public, an attitude that seems reminiscent of the so-called “belles infidèles” approach to translation, which is characterized by a deliberate unfaithfulness to the source text in favour of a faithfulness to the taste and decorum of the translator’s audience.

29All moral considerations aside, there is another major reason for which Ducis may have deviated so radically from Shakespeare’s play: his lack of English. Without any direct access to Shakespeare, it was only through two French translations that he was able to access the play: a 1745 translation by Pierre-Antoine de la Place and a 1776 translation by Pierre Prime Félicien Le Tourneur. Like Ducis, both of these translators express the need to mediate between Shakespeare and their readership, and to discard certain elements that would be too appalling for their audience.

30De la Place, for instance, opts not to translate a large number of scenes, instead providing his readers with brief summaries, some of which are accompanied by notes such as the following:

  • 44 Footnote, Act II, scene vii, Pierre Antoine de la Place (trans.), Othello ou le More de Venise, Tra (...)

This scene depicts, in its natural state, a tavern in which debauchery reigns. This spectacle may once have pleased the English rabble, whom Shakespeare has always had the indulgence to cheer up in even his most serious plays. However, as I am persuaded that such license, particularly in a Tragedy, is no longer to the taste of modern English people, I will refrain from presenting such elements in this Translation to the delicate eyes of our French readers […]44

31He too does not want to offend the sensibilities of his audience and is only willing to transmit the content of Shakespeare’s play so long as it is contained within the limits of his readership’s aesthetic and moral expectations.

  • 45 « Avis sur cette traduction », Pierre Prime Félicien Le Tourneur (trans.), Œuvres complètes de Shak (...)

32As for Le Tourneur, while his translation is more exhaustive than de la Place’s – by exhaustive, I mean that he did not remove any scenes – he also expresses similar sentiments. In his introduction, Le Tourneur describes his translation as “exact and truly faithful,”45 however, it soon becomes apparent that the fidelity he is referring to is not a fidelity to Shakespeare:

  • 46 Ibid.

There are often metaphors and expressions that would appear base and ridiculous if translated word for word into our language, despite being noble in the original. After all, the English have very few base words. The names of all the animals, every detail of the life of people, whether common or highborn, every object of nature – all this is noble in a language that only associates baseness with that which truly shocks and revolts the senses.46

33Like de la Place, Le Tourneur points to a cultural chasm between the English and the French and a responsibility on the part of the translator vis-à-vis his audience. By “fidelity,” Le Tourneur therefore means not only a faithfulness to the source text, but also a faithfulness to the aesthetics of his time and society.

34It is also worth pointing out that both de la Place and Le Tourneur’s translations are written in prose, with the exception of the occasional speech or exchange in de la Place’s text, and neither was intended to be performed. Combined with the strong cultural conscience discussed above, it comes as no surprise that there are significant differences between Shakespeare’s text and the two translations, even without taking into account the shifts that inevitably occur in translation, even with most source-text oriented approaches.

  • 47 John Golder, Shakespeare for the age of reason: the earliest stage adaptations of Jean-François Duc (...)

35Considering that Ducis’ adaptation is based on two translations that were willing to forgo textual fidelity for questions of propriety, any direct comparison with Shakespeare’s play would be misleading, and yet critics have often done just that. Even those who do acknowledge the role of translation do not seem to fully understand what it entails. For instance, Golder, who examines Ducis’s use of the two translations in detail, appears to consider Le Tourneur’s translation to be a perfect equivalent for Shakespeare’s play. He repeatedly makes reference to elements in Shakespeare’s play, but then proceeds to cite Le Tourneur’s translation. Statements such as “Shakespeare’s text is still clearly before Ducis”47 seem aberrant. Is Le Tourneur’s translation to be considered to be an accurate representation of Shakespeare, merely because his translation, unlike de la Place’s, does not omit any scenes? Once again, the inherently transformative nature of translation appears to have been overlooked.

iii. Cosenza’s 1813 Italian adaptation

  • 48 “Apostrofe,” Giovanni Carlo Cosenza, Otello, Azione Patetica in Cinque Atti, Naples, dalla Stamperi (...)

36Let us move on to the second adaptation that Berio worked with in the creation of his libretto. Unlike Ducis, Cosenza does not provide us with a lengthy introduction, but only a brief apostrophe in which he pays tribute to Shakespeare, referring to “Albion’s muse” as well as “Romeo and Juliet.”48 And yet, if we turn to secondary sources, it soon becomes apparent that Cosenza’s work is no more based on Shakespeare than Ducis’.

  • 49 Paolo Somigli, “Da Othello di Shakespeare a Otello ossia Il Moro di Venezia di Rossini - Berio di S (...)
  • 50 Roberta Marvin, “Shakespeare and Primo Ottocento Italian Opera,” art. cit., p. 94.
  • 51 Alberto Manzi, “Cosenza, Giovanni Carlo”, Treccani, accessed 28 October 2020. URL: http://www.trecc (...)

37In fact, there seems to be a consensus that Cosenza turned to none other than Ducis himself. Somigli claims that Cosenza’s adaptation “remains along the same lines as Ducis”49 and Marvin observes that “[n]umerous parallels in scene placement and plot structure exist between Ducis and Cosenza.”50 The entry on Cosenza in the Treccani seems to point in the same direction, although in more ambiguous terms, citing “a French adaptation with a happy ending”51; this could very well be a reference to the happy ending that Ducis appended to his text following the initial reception of his play.

  • 52 For example, Jago’s speech at the end of Act III, scene i, as well as some of his exchanges with Ot (...)

38If we examine certain speeches and exchange in Cosenza’s play however, most particularly those involving his Jago, it seems unlikely that he could have worked exclusively with the French adaptation. Ducis was so appalled by Iago’s character that the character he replaced him with, a certain Pézare, is granted only a minimal role; unlike Iago, Pézare is not accorded any monologues or asides, and his manipulation of Othello is only revealed at the end of the play. Cosenza’s Jago, on the other hand, is given a more substantial role, and some of his lines bring to mind Iago much more than Pézare.52 It therefore seems possible that Cosenza worked with at least one other source, most likely a French or Italian translation. It is also worth examining the question of whether Cosenza would have read Ducis’ play in French, or if he was more likely to have had access to Massucco’s Italian translation. Once more, it would seem that the potential involvement of translation has been largely underexplored.

iv. Leoni’s 1814 Italian translation

39Let us move on now to the third possible source for Rossini’s opera: Leoni’s 1814 Italian translation. In the foreword to his translation (entitled “Intendimento e considerazioni del traduttore”), Leoni makes an interesting claim:

  • 53 Michele Leoni (trans.), Otello o Il moro di Venezia, William Shakespeare, Gaetano Nobile et C., Nap (...)

When I decided to get to know the plays of William Shakespeare, I did not understand a word of English. However, I began to read the French versions by Le Tourneur. Perhaps the correspondence between these versions and the original text was inadequate, for I had been told of the poetic skills of the writer, but could not fully verify them in a prose translation; or perhaps I did not commit myself to my reading with sufficient intellectual intensity. Regardless, I was left with the impression that I was not as profoundly moved by the plays as those who were familiar with the English language. […] I decided to acquire [English] more for love of studying than for the idea of becoming a translator of Shakespeare. I did so with such tenacity of spirit that in less than two years, I found myself able to adequately understand English poetry.53

40While Leoni may boast of having acquired the language of Shakespeare in a mere two years, a closer look at his translation reveals that he remained highly dependent upon Le Tourneur’s translation. For instance, we can observe how Leoni replicates a metaphor first introduced by Le Tourneur:

Table 1: Shakespeare’s metaphor in translation

  • 54 William Shakespeare, Othello, in Samuel Johnson and George Steevens (eds.), The plays of William Sh (...)
  • 55 Act I, Scene II in Pierre Prime Félicien Le Tourneur (trans.), Œuvres complètes de Shakespeare, op. (...)
  • 56 Act I, Scene II in Michele Leoni (trans.), Otello o Il moro di Venezia, op. cit., p. 7.

Shakespeare

Le Tourneur

Leoni

IAGO: Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe.54

JAGO: [E]n ce moment, à l’heure même, un noir vautour se repaît de votre jeune & blanche colombe.55

Negro avvoltoio in questo punto istesso di tua colomba tenera si pasce.56

41Le Tourneur unsurprisingly discards Shakespeare’s “vulgar,” sexually explicit metaphor for a more dignified bird metaphor, which Leoni then reproduces in translation, in his text. It is clear that regardless of the veracity of Leoni’s claim of having learned English, Le Tourneur’s translation continued to have a strong influence on his translation, thereby adding yet another layer of intricacy to our literary genealogy.

Bridging the gap between opera studies and translation studies

42The journey of Othello’s story from Shakespeare’s play to Rossini’s opera, as we have been able to reconstruct it so far, can be summed up in the diagram below:

Figure 1: The literary genealogy of Otello

Figure 1: The literary genealogy of Otello

43When we see the complexity of the relationships between all these different texts, some of which still need to be elucidated, it can be of little surprise that there are significant disparities between Shakespeare and Rossini’s works, even without taking into account the changes that are bound to occur when a literary text is transformed into an opera.

44The first part of this article has demonstrated how parallels can be drawn between the discourse of opera scholars and that of translation scholars. These rhetorical similarities may suggest a certain affinity in terms of the relationship between opera and literary source, and the relationship between a translation and its source. While this would be an interesting notion to explore, a closer examination of the relationship between opera and play reveals that it has often been inaccurately portrayed, and much of the critical discourse has not taken into account all the translations and adaptations that have intervened between the theatrical and operatic texts.

  • 57 See Lance Hewson, An Approach to Translation Criticism: Emma and Madame Bovary in Translation, Amst (...)
  • 58 John Golder, Shakespeare for the age of reason, op. cit., p. 326. Notably, Golder does not make suc (...)

45Even scholars who do take into consideration these “intermediary” texts seem more interested in the effects of adaptation than in translation. Why might this be the case? First of all, I would argue that much of the scholarly interest has focused on the macro features of the opera. The more radical effects of adaptation have garnered more attention, while the more subtle effects of translation have kindled little interest. Furthermore, there is the more general issue of translation often being perceived as a perfect substitute for the original, a misconception that is certainly not limited to the world of opera.57 Golder’s treatment of Le Tourneur’s translation and his claim that the latter provided Ducis with “access to the ‘real Shakespeare’”58 is a perfect example of this. Nevertheless, we cannot disregard translation and its transformative nature. On the contrary, identifying and analyzing the changes that operate when shifting from one language to another is essential to understanding the process that led from the Bard to Rossini.

  • 59 Alexandra Assis Rosa, “Descriptive Translation Studies,” in Yves Gambier and Luc Van Doorslaer (eds (...)
  • 60 Gideon Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 1995, p. 85.

46In addition to taking into consideration the various issues of translation, there also needs to be a change in the way in which we regard the opera as well as the intermediary texts in relation to Shakespeare’s play. Rather than simply using Shakespeare’s work as a measuring stick, we also must consider the translations, adaptations and libretto as independent texts in their own right that were developed in a specific historical, cultural and aesthetic context. In order to take into account all these different factors, opera studies could perhaps take a cue from the evolution of translation studies by turning to descriptive methods, which seek to distance themselves from “the evaluative source-oriented ‘conventional approach to literary translation,’ based on the supremacy of the (naively romantic idea of the) ‘original,’”59 by replacing “an ahistorical largely prescriptive concept” with “a historically-oriented notion with a descriptive potential.”60 These methods might provide a more thorough comprehension of the audience and purpose of each text, thereby accounting for certain choices that the author may have made.

47Concurrently, the translations and adaptations may be a source of valuable insight into the opera’s context of reception, as Hepokoski affirms in his analysis of the sources behind Verdi’s Otello:

  • 61 James Hepokoski, “The Genesis of the Otello Libretto,” Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (eds.), Readin (...)

[W]hen confronting the text and images of the Otello libretto, a knowledge of the rich tradition of English-language criticism, an awareness of the English Othello acting tradition, a comparison of Boito’s Otello with the text of Shakespeare’s play, a study of the contrived libretto structures – all of these things may be valuable, but the evidence that we ought to begin with is the nineteenth-century Continental understanding of Shakespeare, and the details of certain key Shakespearean translations, commentaries and interpretations.61

48Using a descriptive approach to examine the translations and adaptations involved in the creation of a “Shakespearean” opera could therefore make an interesting contribution not only to libretto studies, but also reception studies.

  • 62 See, for example, Dinda L. Gorlée (ed.), Song and Significance: Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translat (...)

49As for translation studies, analyzing the role of translation in libretti would open up a new topic of study in the relatively new interdisciplinary field of music and translation, and more specifically, opera and translation, as up until now, the majority of research on translation and opera has focused on surtitles and libretto translations that are intended to be sung.62 Furthermore, it would provide the opportunity to expand upon current descriptive models of translation criticism and analysis. While these models may be applied directly to some of the texts involved in our literary genealogy – for example when comparing Le Tourneur and de la Place’s translations to Shakespeare’s text – others involve indirect translation, adaptation and intersemiotic translation processes that must also be factored into the analysis. Examining the role of translation in the creation of libretti may therefore expand the horizons of both disciplines, as well as forge new links between them.

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Aldrich-Moodie, James, “False Fidelity: ‘Othello, Otello’, And Their Critics,” Comparative Drama, Volume 28, number 3, Fall 1994, p. 324-347.

Assis Rosa, Alexandra, “Descriptive Translation Studies,” in Yves Gambier and Luc Van Doorslaer (eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies Online, Vol. 4, John Benjamins, 2016, accessed 28 October 2020. URL: https://benjamins.com/online/hts/articles/des1

Baker, Mona and Saldanha, Gabriela, Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, third edition, London, Routledge, 2020.

Bassnett, Susan and Trivedi, Harish (eds.), Post-Colonial Translation, London, Routledge, 1999.

Budden, Julian, The Operas of Verdi, Vol. 3: From Don Carlos to Falstaff, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992.

Chamberlain, Lori, “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation,” Signs, Volume 13, number 3, Spring 1988, p. 454-472.

Chesterman, Andrew, Memes of Translation: The spread of ideas in translation theory. Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2016.

Collins, Michael (ed.), Otello, ossia Il Moro di Venezia: dramma per musica in tre atti di Francesco Berio di Salsa, musica di Gioachino Rossini, Pesaro, Fondazione Rossini, 1994.

Cosenza, Giovanni Carlo, Otello, Azione Patetica in Cinque Atti, Naples, dalla Stamperia Francese, 1826.

De Rougemont, Martine, « Un rendez-vous manqué : Shakespeare et les Français au XVIIIème siècle », Roger Bauer (ed.), Shakespeare-Bild in Europa zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik, Bern, P. Lang, 1988.

Dean, Winton, “Shakespeare and Opera” in Phyllis Hartnoll (ed.), Shakespeare in Music, London, Macmillan, 1964, p. 89-175.

Ducis, Jean-François, « Avertissement », Othello ou Le More de Venise, Paris, Chez André, 1799.

Ferrari, Luigi, Le Traduzioni Italiane del Teatro Tragico Francese nei Secoli XVII° e XVIII°, Genève Slatkine, 1974.

Golder, John, Shakespeare for the age of reason: the earliest stage adaptations of Jean-François Ducis: 1769-1792, Oxford, The Voltaire Foundation, 1992.

Golomb, Harai, “Music-Linked Translation [MLT] and Mozart’s Operas,” in Dinda Gorlée (ed.), Song and Significance: Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translation, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2005, p. 121-161.

Gorlée, Dinda L. (ed.), Song and Significance: Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translation, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2005.

Groos, Arthur, and Parker, Roger (eds.), Reading Opera, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1988.

Hepokoski, James, “The Genesis of the Otello Libretto,” Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (eds.), Reading Opera, Princeton, Princeton University, 1988.

Hewson, Lance, An Approach to Translation Criticism: Emma and Madame Bovary in Translation, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2011.

Istel, Edgar, and Baker, Theodore, “The ‘Othello’ of Verdi and Shakespeare,” The Musical Quarterly, Volume 2, number 3, July 1916.

Klein, John W., “Verdi’s ‘Otello’ and Rossini’s,” Music & Letters, Volume 45, number 2, April 1964, p. 130-140.

Manzi, Alberto, “Cosenza, Giovanni Carlo,” Treccani, accessed 28 October 2020. URL: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-carlo-cosenza_%28Enciclopedia-Italiana%29/

Marschall, Gottfried R. (ed.), La traduction des livrets : Aspects théoriques, historiques et pragmatiques, Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2004.

Marvin, Roberta, “Shakespeare and Primo Ottocento Italian Opera: The Case of Rossini’s Otelloin Holger Klein and Christopher Smith (eds.), Tzirhe Opera and Shakespeare, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen, 1994, p. 71-95.

Minors, Helen Julia (ed.), Music, Text and Translation, London, Bloomsbury, 2013.

de la Place, Pierre Antoine (trans.), Othello ou le More de Venise, Tragédie de Shakespeare, Le Théâtre anglois, London, s.n., 1746.

Shakespeare, William, Othello, in Samuel Johnson and George Steevens (eds.), The plays of William Shakespeare in ten volumes: with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators, Vol. 10, London, Printed for C. Bathurst, 1773.

Shakespeare, William, Michele Leoni (trans.), Otello o Il moro di Venezia, William Shakespeare, Gaetano Nobile et C., Naples, 1825.

Shuttleworth, Mark and Cowie, Moira, Dictionary of Translation Studies, Abingdon, Routledge, 2014.

Somigli, Paolo, “Da Othello di Shakespeare a Otello ossia Il Moro di Venezia di Rossini - Berio di Salsa”, Rivista di Studi Italiani, number 1, 2004, p. 41-58.

Le Tourneur, Pierre Prime Félicien (trans), Œuvres complètes de Shakespeare, Volume 1, Paris, Ladvocat, 1821.

Toury, Gideon, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 1995.

Vitoux, Frédéric, Gioacchino Rossini, Paris, Mazarine, 1982.

Haut de page

Notes

1 James Aldrich-Moodie, “False Fidelity: ‘Othello, Otello’, And Their Critics”, Comparative Drama, Volume 28, number 3, Fall 1994, p. 330.

2 In “Introduction,” Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (eds.), Reading Opera, Princeton, Princeton University, 1988, p. 1.

3 Id., p. 7.

4 For a brief overview of how Monteverdi’s operatic works led to operas being considered a primarily music-based art form, see Harai Golomb, “Music-Linked Translation [MLT] and Mozart’s Operas”, in Dinda Gorlée (ed.), Song and Significance: Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translation, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005, p. 125-126.

5 For the purposes of this paper, I will be focusing on modern-day discourse surrounding these operas. However, as we have already seen above, even when these operas premiered, they often had to bear comparison with the play. For instance, in Rossini’s case, we might cite Verdi, who notably would go on to create his own operatic version of Othello; in a letter, Giuseppina Verdi recounts how her husband and his entourage labeled Rossini’s opera “a hateful caricature of Shakespeare’s drama” (in Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi, Vol. 3: From Don Carlos to Falstaff, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992).

6 Winton Dean, “Shakespeare and Opera” in Phyllis Hartnoll (ed.), Shakespeare in Music, London, Macmillan, 1964, p. 89.

7 Indeed, a comprehensive survey of operas based on Shakespearean subjects (see Dean p. 96-175) unsurprisingly reveals that the great majority of these operas were conceived in French, Italian and German, and not English, therefore implicating a linguistic gap that the composers and librettists were frequently only able to mediate by means of translation in one form or another. Nonetheless, there are, of course, some English Shakespearean operas, perhaps the most renowned being Britten and Pears’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

8 Aldrich-Moodie makes this same observation when looking specifically at the discourse on Verdi and Rossini’s respective Otellos. James Aldrich-Moodie, “False Fidelity: ‘Othello, Otello’, And Their Critics,” art. cit., p. 325.

9 A thorough analysis of the transformation process would evidently also have to take into consideration the specificities of the different genres involved; for instance, an opera libretto is governed by vocal and musical considerations that can both constrain the text as well as act as a carrier of meaning. However, in the context of this article, I will not be examining these issues in more detail.

10 Frédéric Vitoux, Gioacchino Rossini, Paris, Mazarine, 1982, p. 198; my translation.

11 John W. Klein, “Verdi’s ‘Otello’ and Rossini’s,” Music & Letters, vol. 45, number 2, April 1964, p. 130.

12 Id., p. 131.

13 James Aldrich-Moodie, “False Fidelity: ‘Othello, Otello’, And Their Critics”, art. cit., p. 324-347.

14 Id., p. 325.

15 Id., p. 324.

16 John W. Klein, “Verdi’s ‘Otello’ and Rossini’s,” art. cit., p. 132-133.

17 Id., p. 133.

18 Edgar Istel and Theodore Baker, “The ‘Othello’ of Verdi and Shakespeare,” The Musical Quarterly, Volume 2, number 3, July 1916, p. 375.

19 Frédéric Vitoux, Gioacchino Rossini, op. cit., p. 198. My translation.

20 Edgar Istel and Theodore Baker, “The ‘Othello’ of Verdi and Shakespeare,” art. cit., p. 375.

21 John W. Klein, “Verdi’s ‘Otello’ and Rossini’s,” art. cit., p. 133.

22 Roberta Marvin, “Shakespeare and Primo Ottocento Italian Opera: The Case of Rossini’s Otelloin Holger Klein and Christopher Smith (eds.), Tzirhe Opera and Shakespeare, Lewiston, Edwin Mellen, 1994, p. 71-95.

23 Stendhal perfectly illustrates this attitude, claiming that “nobody gives a damn for the librettist; for who indeed […] would dream of judging an opera by the words?” in Groos and Parker, Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (eds.), Reading Opera, op. cit., p. 3-4.

24 Mark Shuttleworth and Moira Cowie, ‘Source Text-oriented Translation Studies,’ Dictionary of Translation Studies, Abingdon, Routledge, 2014, p. 158.

25 Andrew Chesterman, Memes of Translation: The spread of ideas in translation theory, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2016, p. 4-5.

26 James Aldrich-Moodie, “False Fidelity: ‘Othello, Otello’, And Their Critics,” art. cit., p. 324.

27 Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, ‘gender’, Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, third edition, London, Routledge, 2020.

28 Lori Chamberlain, “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation,” Signs, Volume 13, number 3, Spring 1988, p. 456.

29 Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (eds.), Post-Colonial Translation, London, Routledge, 1999.

30 Mark Shuttleworth and Moira Cowie, “fidelity,” Dictionary of Translation Studies, op. cit., p. 157.

31 Shuttleworth and Cowie, “Source Text-oriented Translation Studies,” art. cit., p. 158.

32 Andrew Chesterman, Memes of Translation, op. cit., p. 4.

33 Roberta Marvin, “Shakespeare and Primo Ottocento Italian Opera,” art. cit., p. 75.

34 Mark Shuttleworth and Moira Cowie, “adaptation,” Dictionary of Translation Studies, op. cit., p. 3.

35 Michael Collins (ed.), Otello, ossia Il Moro di Venezia: dramma per musica in tre atti di Francesco Berio di Salsa, musica di Gioachino Rossini, Pesaro, Fondazione Rossini, 1994, p. xxiv.

36 Roberta Marvin, “Shakespeare and Primo Ottocento Italian Opera,” art. cit., p. 75.

37 Michael Collins (ed.), Otello, ossia Il Moro di Venezia, op. cit., p. xxiv. My translation.

38 Id., p 77.

39 Ibid.

40 Id., p. xxx.

41 See Luigi Ferrari, Le Traduzioni Italiane del Teatro Tragico Francese nei Secoli XVII° e XVIII°, Genève Slatkine, 1974, p. 196.

42 Martine de Rougemont, « Un rendez-vous manqué : Shakespeare et les Français au XVIIIème siècle », in Roger Bauer (ed.), Shakespeare-Bild in Europa zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik, Bern, P. Lang, 1988, p. 105. My translation.

43 Jean-François Ducis, « Avertissement », Othello ou Le More de Venise, Paris, Chez André, 1799. My translation.

44 Footnote, Act II, scene vii, Pierre Antoine de la Place (trans.), Othello ou le More de Venise, Tragédie de Shakespeare, Le Théâtre anglois, London, s.n., 1746. My translation.

45 « Avis sur cette traduction », Pierre Prime Félicien Le Tourneur (trans.), Œuvres complètes de Shakespeare, vol. 1, Paris, Ladvocat, 1821. My translation.

46 Ibid.

47 John Golder, Shakespeare for the age of reason: the earliest stage adaptations of Jean-François Ducis: 1769-1792, Oxford, The Voltaire Foundation, 1992, p. 279.

48 “Apostrofe,” Giovanni Carlo Cosenza, Otello, Azione Patetica in Cinque Atti, Naples, dalla Stamperia Francese, 1826.

49 Paolo Somigli, “Da Othello di Shakespeare a Otello ossia Il Moro di Venezia di Rossini - Berio di Salsa,” Rivista di Studi Italiani, number 1, 2004, p. 41; my translation.

50 Roberta Marvin, “Shakespeare and Primo Ottocento Italian Opera,” art. cit., p. 94.

51 Alberto Manzi, “Cosenza, Giovanni Carlo”, Treccani, accessed 28 October 2020. URL: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-carlo-cosenza_%28Enciclopedia-Italiana%29/ My translation.

52 For example, Jago’s speech at the end of Act III, scene i, as well as some of his exchanges with Othello in Act III, scene ii.

53 Michele Leoni (trans.), Otello o Il moro di Venezia, William Shakespeare, Gaetano Nobile et C., Naples, 1825, p. vii-viii.

54 William Shakespeare, Othello, in Samuel Johnson and George Steevens (eds.), The plays of William Shakespeare in ten volumes: with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators, Vol. 10, London, Printed for C. Bathurst, 1773, p. 364.

55 Act I, Scene II in Pierre Prime Félicien Le Tourneur (trans.), Œuvres complètes de Shakespeare, op. cit., p. 8.

56 Act I, Scene II in Michele Leoni (trans.), Otello o Il moro di Venezia, op. cit., p. 7.

57 See Lance Hewson, An Approach to Translation Criticism: Emma and Madame Bovary in Translation, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2011, p. 1.

58 John Golder, Shakespeare for the age of reason, op. cit., p. 326. Notably, Golder does not make such statements about de la Place’s translation, likely because it deviated more radically from Shakespeare’s play.

59 Alexandra Assis Rosa, “Descriptive Translation Studies,” in Yves Gambier and Luc Van Doorslaer (eds.), Handbook of Translation Studies Online, Vol. 4, John Benjamins, 2016, accessed 28 October 2020. URL: https://benjamins.com/online/hts/articles/des1

60 Gideon Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 1995, p. 85.

61 James Hepokoski, “The Genesis of the Otello Libretto,” Arthur Groos and Roger Parker (eds.), Reading Opera, Princeton, Princeton University, 1988. This is one of the rare studies in opera that not only addresses the issue of translation, but also analyses it in detail.

62 See, for example, Dinda L. Gorlée (ed.), Song and Significance: Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translation, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2005; Gottfried R. Marschall (ed.), La traduction des livrets : Aspects théoriques, historiques et pragmatiques, Paris, Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2004; and Helen Julia Minors (ed.), Music, Text and Translation, London, Bloomsbury, 2013.

Haut de page

Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1: The literary genealogy of Otello
URL http://journals.openedition.org/trans/docannexe/image/5269/img-1.png
Fichier image/png, 55k
Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Danielle Thien, « Operatic Forays into Translation Studies: Translation, Adaptation and Rossini’s Otello »TRANS- [En ligne], 26 | 2021, mis en ligne le 11 mars 2021, consulté le 21 mai 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/trans/5269 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/trans.5269

Haut de page

Auteur

Danielle Thien

Danielle Thien est assistante doctorante à la Faculté de traduction et d’interprétation de l’Université de Genève. Dans le cadre de la thèse qu’elle est en train de réaliser, elle examine le rôle de la traduction et de l’interprétation dans la création d’opéras italiens du XIXe siècle qui ont repris les sujets de pièces de théâtre de Shakespeare.

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

Le texte et les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés), sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search