Miriam Ellis
Miriam Ellis has taught French and other courses at UC Santa Cruz for over 35 years. As stage director for the University Opera Workshop, she began translating opera for performance in English, before the days of super-titles. She is a published author and has translated a wide-ranging array of works, including academic articles on musicology, literature and sociology, complete operas and plays, individual scenes, critical essays, super-titles for opera and theater performance, poems, and poetic anthologies. In 2018, with the invaluable help of Dr. Gildas Hamel, she decided to put online some of the operatic pieces she has translated over the years for the Santa Cruz Opera Society’s Recital Series, and for the numerous opera courses and lectures which she has presented for UC Santa Cruz, the Lifelong Learners at UCSC (now the OSHER Lifelong Learning Institute), and for community groups. Since 2013, Dr. Ellis has been an active member of the Rédaction (Editorial Board) of ResMusica, a French online magazine devoted to classical music and dance, for whom she has translated many articles, critical reviews, and interviews, into English.
Her latest book, (co-authored with Professor Sherwood Dudley), is an innovative piano-vocal score of Mozart/Da Ponte’s opera, The Marriage of Figaro, subtitled The Flexible Figaro. This name derives from the fact that the work not only features a new translation of the Italian libretto, but also offers the possibility of substituting optional English dialogue, translated from Beaumarchais’s original play, Le mariage de Figaro, for any of the recitatives and sung pieces. Thus, producers and stage directors can devise their own version of Figaro, in Italian and/or English. For more details, please see information on the book.
A note about the translations: We have attempted to reproduce the tone, meaning, and metric pattern of the original text, insofar as possible, while respecting the level of discourse of the character singing the piece. Overall, we strive to make the text readily comprehensible, avoiding literal or “translatorese” interpretations, and provide a brief synopsis to help place the piece in the context of the plot. Also Included are details of the composer, librettist, date of the opera’s premiere, and provenance of the translations, some of which are “singable” and have been performed in English, either in recital or productions.
We particularly hope that the versions we offer will be of help to voice students, aspiring professionals, opera novices and buffs, and anyone interested in becoming more familiar with this complex art form. If you choose to utilize any of the translations on this site, we would appreciate a note of acknowledgment, as well as any comments you may have.