Language
The Handmaid's Tale was from the beginning composed for Paul Bentley's English libretto alongside Ruders' Danish translation of the libretto. The Danish title was Tjenerindens fortælling.
The Danish Royal Opera who commissioned the work wanted the opera performed in Danish, but performances outside Denmark have all been sung in English.
Read more about this topic: The Handmaid's Tale (opera)
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen—but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)
“The writer’s language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.”
—Paul De Man (1919–1983)