There used to be a jazz musician, Benny Green I think, who wrote a weekly column in one of the British daily papers not noted for being interested in the high arts.
One day he was musing on music and exotic-sounding names, and asked if anyone would think worse of an opera if it was written by some bloke whose name was Joe Green rather than something Italian or German.
Americans aren't great opera creators. We have PORGY & BESS of course. The composers don't write great big music as a rule. We have George Gershwin and his Rhapsody in Blue. I'm not that knowledgeable about it of course. We have our own genre unique to us. Blues. Jazz. I think both began here but I could be wrong. But great composers like Verdi? I don't think so. Perhaps some Answermuggers do know and can fill in the blanks. Joe Green is Giuseppe Verdi? Maybe some music snobs would find it "less than" but I go by what I hear and how it makes me feel. Just as is true of art. If it's breathtakingly beautiful I can't see how the name of the artist would matter at all. Except to snobs who are into "namebrand" "top of the line". Rolex watches and Lamborghinis. Stuff like that. They're the ones who would never ever deign to shop at WALMART. They don't go slumming for best prices. They go to high-end because they can afford to do that. To be honest I'm more apt to want to talk to a Jennifer than a Gertrude or Hortense. No disrespect intended to Gertrude or Hortense. What's in a name? I don't want to know what STINKWEED smells like. Thank you for your reply Durdle.
This post was edited by RosieG at September 24, 2019 1:53 AM MDT
Don't forget Aaron Copeland! He wrote in a considerably more classical style than Gershwin, who was influenced by jazz and blues, but both are rated as first-class composers in their own styles. I am pretty sure Copeland did not write any operas though.
In our time, John Adams (composer, conductor and clarinetist, born 1947) is one of America's leading composers, as well as conductor and clarinettist. He wrote the 1987-premiered opera Nixon In China, libretto by Alison Goodman, inspired by President Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China.
Yes: Guiseppe Verdi does indeed translate as Joseph Green. That was Benny Green's point in his newspaper column, that an "ordinary" name is not a sign of lower quality. We tend to think of names in other languages as somehow exotic, as you see in cookery, but really they are no more exotic than our own. I think if you were to translate a French, German or Italian operatic aria, or one of Schubert's Lieder (which simply means "songs"!) into English, it would be in quite simple language. Poetry, yes, and in its own writer's and country's literary styles of their times, but not ever so fancy.
I live near the "isle" of Portland, source of the world-famous white limestone "Portland Stone" - some of it was even used for your Mason-Dixon Line markers. Some years ago now, the local newspaper showed a photograph of a very elaborate bas-relief carving in the rock, made by the masonry works on Portland to order for the palace gateway of a Middle Eastern potentate with a characteristic, very long Arabian name that's almost a family-tree. The objects in the carving represent aspects of the family's life; and right in the middle is an anvil. Why? Among all their "Abdul bin... " elements, the family name is.... Smith!
Durdle 