# Italian, and opera question



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I'm learning Italian for an upcoming trip to Italy, and after about a month, I realized I might start to be able to listening to opera, if I learned the proper words. Now I'm not to that point, I just realized hey there will be a point that I don't need subtitles anymore. My question is, how do I go about finding the words I need to be able to understand it properly? Just listen for them, or is there a common opera phrase book lying around someplace I could pick up? I have noticed that singing is a good deal harder to hear than just spoken, in any language, are there any tips for listening?


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

Manok said:


> I'm learning Italian for an upcoming trip to Italy, and after about a month, I realized I might start to be able to listening to opera, if I learned the proper words. Now I'm not to that point, I just realized hey there will be a point that I don't need subtitles anymore. My question is, how do I go about finding the words I need to be able to understand it properly? Just listen for them, or is there a common opera phrase book lying around someplace I could pick up? I have noticed that singing is a good deal harder to hear than just spoken, in any language, are there any tips for listening?


Italian is a beautiful language and well done for wanting to learn some before you go. However operatic language is different from ordinary spoken language and the words don't sound the same. I have difficulty understanding the words in an English opera.

You could buy a good used 'box set' version of a popular opera and get one with the libretto included. This will give you the words and a translation. A DVD will also give you subtitles in the original language.

This has double sub-titles.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Tip: Hopefully there will be English surtitles at the opera you attend, although not so likely in Italy I guess. Knowing the plot and the music will enhance your enjoyment of an opera far more than being able to discern some of the words.

I've picked up some Italian over the years simply from being interested and making visits there. But being able to understand live opera singers is a different matter, particularly given the size of many opera houses and the diction of the singers.

However your desire to learn Italian is laudable and anything you can learn will greatly enhance your visit. These days my Italian learning comes from the DVD box set of Inspector Montalbano, with subtitles on.


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## graziesignore (Mar 13, 2015)

> However operatic language is different from ordinary spoken language and the words don't sound the same.


This fact threw me off when I was first getting into Italian opera. I can follow written or normally spoken Italian reasonably enough based on my general knowledge of Romance languages that I have studied (Spanish, French, though obviously there are significant differences). But I could never follow along with the singing, and I was confused until I realized there were all sorts of elisions going on, etc. I still like to listen and learn by having _Italian_ subtitles on the Italian operas I watch. (In fact, if I want to know what's going on in English, I usually read an English translated libretto first, then watch the opera.)


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

Are elisions like French liaisons? I've heard some Italian opera bits and pieces since learning the basics of Italian, and I can pick out the words that I know, sometimes, others I can't. I doubt I will convince my brother to see an opera there . My French is at a low level of fluency, I've managed to make some friends online in French, and have noticed many similar words, though the grammar is quite different.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Manok said:


> I'm learning Italian for an upcoming trip to Italy, and after about a month, I realized I might start to be able to listening to opera, if I learned the proper words. Now I'm not to that point, I just realized hey there will be a point that I don't need subtitles anymore. My question is, how do I go about finding the words I need to be able to understand it properly? Just listen for them, or is there a common opera phrase book lying around someplace I could pick up? I have noticed that singing is a good deal harder to hear than just spoken, in any language, are there any tips for listening?


The good news is that, of the three Italian opera houses I visited, two (Florence and Bologna) had projected supertitles in Italian, and La Scala (at least in the stalls) had seat-back subtitle screens in multiple languages including Italian and English. That should tell you that even Italians need a bit a help following operatic Italian.

Even with supertitles, I think it's still necessary to study the libretto beforehand in a good side-by-side Italian/English version as suggested above. There are the archaic words, and often the word order is more about poetic symmetry than grammatical sense - particularly with Verdi and earlier. I have found, though, that the combination of a basic knowledge of the language, the effort of libretto study in advance, and the crutch of the Italian subtitles works well and has exponentially increased my appreciation and enjoyment of opera.

I like your idea of an opera phrase book. You learn pretty quickly a bunch of commonly occurring words in opera that (thankfully) you don't hear very often in everyday life. I'm not feeling ambitious enough to start a glossary of Italian opera here, and it's probably worthy of its own thread, but you'll become very familiar with the words for:
_Death
Murder
Blood
Fate
Love
Hate
Poison
Sword/Dagger/Blade
Unhappy/Unfortunate
King
Throne_
... among others


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## graziesignore (Mar 13, 2015)

> ... among others


How about _father, daughter, son, traitor_, and of course, _heart_, which is practically every fifth word in an Italian opera?

After a few months of Italian opera, you too will be able to express with utter fluency your very great disappointment with your children...


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Be careful about getting complete sets of operas on CD . Most of them include a booklet with the synopsis, the original libretto and a side-by-side English translation , but not all do . Particularly the 
budget recordings of live performances which were pirated long ago on smaller indepepndent labels . 
But the major labels such as Decca, EMI, RCA, Sony Classical, DG and Philips etc, usually do have the booklet and translation .


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Opera Italian CAN help in some cases. A friend was driving in Italy and he was lost, so he approached a _carabinieri_ (policeman/guard) and exclaimed: "Sola, perduta, abbandonata!" (Alone, lost, abandoned), which are the opening words of an operatic character's last-Act aria. (Manon Lescaut) The carabinieri was vastly amused - I'd like to think he was an opera lover - and, fortunately, spoke some English. Lucky for my friend, the aria's language was identical to modern Italian, but many of the most popular operas are composed to archaic, poetic texts, or seldom-used expressions, and strange contractions. Puccini's operas have more approachable modern Italian. But I think you'd be better off watching Italian films to learn modern Italian - though subtitles can be dicey at times. That, and opera, was how I learned my Italian. BTW you can find opera libretti ("little books" containing the words and translations) online (opera folio.com). Best of luck - buona fortuna!
MAS


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

graziesignore said:


> How about _father, daughter, son, traitor_, and of course, _heart_, which is practically every fifth word in an Italian opera?
> 
> After a few months of Italian opera, you too will be able to express with utter fluency your very great disappointment with your children...


Heh, I almost edited my post again to add _traitor_, and it's corollary:_ungrateful_. And of course _God_, _gods_, and _cursed_. And I guess it shouldn't be surprising that Italian has a special word for _wedding bed_ and that in opera it rarely has pleasant connotations. One word commonly sung at the height of passion needs no translation:_Vendetta_.


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## graziesignore (Mar 13, 2015)

That story about the lost motorist is too funny.

This thread about speaking in weird operatic Italian reminds me a bit of "Prisencolinensinainciusol"...


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