Intertextuality in nineteenth-century Italian librettos: To translate or not to translate?
A case study of Adriana Lecouvreur
Miquel Edo | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
This study looks at whether it is feasible or desirable to translate stylistic intertextuality in
opera librettos, particularly wording and utterances from late medieval and Renaissance Italian poetry which are put
into the mouths of dramatic characters in 19th- and early 20th-century Italian operas. The paper describes the various
techniques available to deal with such situations and notes that they are incompatible with a modernising-naturalising
strategy. Rather, they can be used only as part of an archaising modality of translation that audiences and critics
only accept in a diluted form. The discussion that follows is essentially based on two scenes from Francesco Cilea’s
Adriana Lecouvreur.
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