On Wednesday, October 14th the Metropolitan Opera House held the acclaimed production of Verdi’s Otello. Right as I entered through the grand doors, the scene was set. From the beautiful entrance, to the well-dressed audience, to the soft, yet somehow loud voices echoing across the Met, everything was in line for what I expected to be formal performance. I continued observing in shock as I prepared for my first opera performance of such magnitude and intensity. Moments later, following about a five-minute walk to my seat, the performance was set to begin. The doors closed, the lights dimmed and all the focus diverted to the stage. There was no talking, no clapping, and god-forbid someone’s phone should ring, there was certainly no answering. The performance began and everything else just seemed to stop.
The pre-opera (as described in the introductory paragraph) was an experience alone. But once the opera began, I noticed certain things that struck me as peculiar. Firstly, something within the audience itself struck me. Very few people around me chose to have the English translations enabled. I found myself frequently glancing down at the small screen displayed in front of me, searching for translations. It wasn’t until well into the first scene that I realized I was almost the only one doing so. It was at that point when my attention shifted from the stage, to the audience. People didn’t disable the subtitles because they knew the language being versed. They certainly didn’t disable the subtitles because they lacked an interest in the context of what was flowing beautifully from the performer’s mouths. They shut it off because it didn’t matter. The words themselves had no value whatsoever. They didn’t have to understand the words. A slight previous knowledge to the story of Othello was more than enough to understand exactly what was taking place when combined with the other aspects of the performance.
The reason people decided to go without subtitles was a mere product of the performance. It was something that I found to be more surprising than anything else within the performance itself. The way the set was displayed, the characters positioned, the music played, the background depicted, and literally everything else, led to a certain understanding of the play. It seemed in a strange way to have a universally understood language of its own. The way the orchestra meshed almost perfectly with the proper colors and features displayed in the background, which corresponded to a note or tone expressed by a performer explained more than any subtitle could have. No one seemed to have been lost at any points of the orchestra. Everybody seemed to have been entirely engaged. There were some boring parts, some interesting parts, some ‘ehh’ parts, and some emotionally exhilarating parts. All of which were conveyed through an amalgamation of features other than verbal language. The play was spoken with instruments, vocals, colors, and building structures. Words were just a means used to reach the vocal aspect of the language.
I liked how you focused on a small detail such as the small screen with the translations on the seats and expanded on how something a person might see as an insignificant object meant something much bigger. I too was one of the audience members who turned on the small screen with the translations. I frequently looked at it as well to see what was being sung especially in the first two acts. After a while, I noticed what you did: people were turning them off and those who still had them on were not even looking at it. I was still looking at mine part way into the third act, but suddenly I lost interest in looking at the screen since it became more of a distraction from the play than an aid. Once I took my eyes off the screen, I immediately began to understand more of the play and appreciate the powerful singing by the cast members rather than the actual lyrical meaning of the play. It was no longer a matter of what I read on the screen, but what I felt was conveyed to me through the emotions of the voices that allowed me to understand what was going on in the story.