“Reflecting on Style and Surtitles: The Case of Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi”

The aim of this work is to integrate a more traditional description of what opera surtitling is – a professional practice first and foremost, relatively recently turned into the object of academic research, which should deserve further attention by scholars and professionals alike, also due to its strategic importance in terms of social inclusion and accessibility – with a reflection on style in translation: in other words, this contribution intends to verify whether, and to what extent, opera surtitles should be “condemned” to be a highly summarised and abridged form of translation, or whether, instead, they can be respectful and accurate in reproducing the stylistic features and rhetorical effects of the original libretto, in spite of their brevity and conciseness. The selection of the linguistic materials fell on Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi, based on Arrigo Boito’s libretto because, due to the sparking creativity and huge variety of his lexical and stylistic choices, producing English surtitles from this libretto is a stimulating task which requires not only a sound professional background, but also a refined artistic sensibility. Therefore, many significant examples are available to those who want to investigate such issues as surtitling and stylistics, since these surtitles are a successful illustration of a stylistically-oriented translation.