Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another.
Closed captioning (CC) and subtitling are both processes of displaying text on a television, video screen, or other visual display to provide additional or interpretive information. Both are typically used as a transcription of the audio portion of a program as it occurs, sometimes including descriptions of non-speech elements. Other uses have included providing a textual alternative language translation of a presentation's primary audio language that is usually burned-in to the video and unselectable.
A libretto is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term libretto is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass, requiem and sacred cantata, or the story line of a ballet.
Marc Okrand is an American linguist. His professional work is in Native American languages, and he is well known as the creator of the Klingon language in the Star Trek science fiction franchise.
The San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California.
The Canadian Opera Company (COC) is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and one of the largest producers of opera in North America. The COC performs at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, which was purpose-built for opera and ballet and is shared with the National Ballet of Canada. For forty years until April 2006, the COC had performed at the O'Keefe Centre.
Opera North is an English opera company based in Leeds. The company's home theatre is the Leeds Grand Theatre, but it also presents regular seasons in several other cities, at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle. The company's orchestra, the Orchestra of Opera North, regularly performs and records in its own right. Operas are performed either in English translation or in the original language of the libretto, in the latter case usually with surtitles.
Lotfollah "Lotfi" Mansouri was an Iranian-born opera director and manager. He was an opera director from about 1960 onwards, and is best known for being the General Director of the Canadian Opera Company and of the San Francisco Opera from 1988 through 2001. In 1992 he became a Chevalier of France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the subject of a 1998 biography.
An electronic libretto system is used primarily in opera houses and is a device which presents translations of lyrics into an audience's language or transcribes lyrics that may be difficult to understand when sung.
Subtitles are texts representing the contents of the audio in a film, television show, opera or other audiovisual media. Subtitles might provide a transcription or translation of spoken dialogue. Although naming conventions can vary, captions are subtitles that include written descriptions of other elements of the audio ,like music or sound effects. Captions are thus especially helpful to people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Subtitles may also add information that is not present in the audio. Localizing subtitles provide cultural context to viewers. For example, a subtitle could be used to explain to an audience unfamiliar with sake that it is a type of Japanese wine. Lastly, subtitles are sometimes used for humor, as in Annie Hall, where subtitles show the characters' inner thoughts, which contradict what they were saying in the audio.
The word titling, in the performing arts, defines the work of linguistic mediation encompassing subtitling and surtitling.
Figaro Systems, Inc. is an American company that provides seatback and wireless titling software and system installations to opera houses and other music performance venues worldwide. The company is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was established in 1993 by Patrick Markle, Geoff Webb, and Ron Erkman and was the first company to provide assistive technology that enables individualized, simultaneous, multi-lingual dialogue and libretto-reading for audiences.
Detroit Opera is the principal opera company in Michigan, US. The company is based in Detroit, where it performs in the Detroit Opera House. Prior to February 28, 2022, the company was named Michigan Opera Theatre.
Family Opera Initiative (FOI) is an American opera company based in New York City that commissions, develops, and premieres original works for cross-generational audiences. It was founded in 1995 by Grethe Barrett Holby, originally as part of American Opera Projects. Its mission was and remains to create new repertory for family audiences, to bring the experience of opera to a diverse audience, and to engage the community in the process and performance of their works.
AirScript is a hand-held device that provides theatregoers with subtitles in a variety of languages. It was designed by Show Translations, a company that specializes in live entertainment translation, and built by Cambridge Consultants, a leading technology and product development firm.
Radio Marconi is an Italian-based company that has installed and serviced audio-visual and radio equipment since 1993. It designs interactive multimedia communication systems. The company has also developed several applications for theaters, conference centers, museums and stadiums. During its lifespan, the company has become a service center for brands such as Sony, Sennheiser, Neumann, and Televic, with customers based in radio, television, theater, public authorities and security forces.
The term multilingual titling defines, in the field of titling for the performing arts, the chance for the audience to follow more than one linguistic option.
Multimedia translation, also sometimes referred to as Audiovisual translation, is a specialized branch of translation which deals with the transfer of multimodal and multimedial texts into another language and/or culture. and which implies the use of a multimedia electronic system in the translation or in the transmission process.
Sonya Haddad was a libretto translator and surtitler for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Amir Reza Koohestani is an Iranian theatre maker who was born in Shiraz, Iran.
