Meltzer's Plea

Critic Charles Henry Meltzer was last week quoted in Musical America on the perenniel topic of opera in English. Said Critic Meltzer :

"Without English, opera will either die here before many years, or remain what it has long been in this country--the privilege of a few. With English text, it may be a joy for millions of Americans, who now know it chiefly through the 'movies' and the broadcasters."

He went on to quote Victor Maurel, famed French baritone, who said that Verdi's Falstaff "screams for English"; Tito Ricordi, Milanese music publisher, who said that English, next to Italian, was the most "singable" of all tongues; Richard Wagner, who said that he wished his works to be given in English in all English-speaking countries.

Critic Meltzer thereupon presented specimens of operas which he has translated into English for the Edith Rockefeller McCormick edition of modern librettos, now being issued at the expense of the famed Chicago patroness of music.

The translations of Meltzer were adept, painstaking, vigorous; they paraphrased the originals as closely as it is possible for the verse of one country to paraphrase that of another. Nevertheless, they were abominable poetry Some of the lines possessed a certain insipid grace; far more of them had the stilted, fustian air that can only be characterized by the adjective "operatic." Such lines as "Naught my sweetheart from me shall sunder," "Thou'dst best beware," "I know not what I'm saying or what I'm doing" were hackneyed when Alfred Lord Tennyson was a litle boy in Lincolnshire and completely outmoded long before he was an old man in Aldworth. Such archaisms as "dight," "say him nay," "fain," such clichees as "balmy breezes," "surly portals" are all shoddy stuff. They are no easier to sing than good English. Yet the fault was not Translator Meltzer's, for the general run of librettos are concocted out of just such snips, snails, puppydogs' tails of poetry.

The question has often been asked by well-intentioned people: Why do not great poets write librettos, great translators do them into English, so that U. S. audiences may hear words whose beauty matches the music they occasion ? Always the reply is the same: In opera, the play is not the thing. Modern singers, it is true, are trained to careful diction; but even to the best of singers, words are no more than so many sibilants, dental fricatives, head-tones and gargles. It is often difficult, even for a critic reasonably near the stage and with a command of several languages, to tell what tongue an opera singer is enraptured in, unless he cheats by looking at the program. Great poets are sensitive. To hear their lines thus trilled, gargled, causes them inconceivable anguish; they seldom write librettos. Yet U. S. audiences, hearing opera in French, German, Russian, Italian, care little. They, sensitive to poetry though unlearned in languages, can taste in the language of imagination the exquisite words which should properly accompany exquisite music. Little desiring opera in English, these operagoers read with indignation Critic Meltzer's plea, looked with scorn upon his competent translations.