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:
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)