Opera with subtitles

Last Saturday I went to the Opera with my Dutch family. We went to see “La Clemenza di Tito”, by Mozart, at the Lucent Danstheater in The Hague.

I used to go often to concerts with my parents when I was teen, when they would buy season tickets. From last Saturday’s experience, I wanted to comment on a feature of the theatre that I had never seen before: at the theatre, in The Hague, there was a screen displaying a Dutch translation of the dialogues sang by the opera singers at the play.

When I attended with my parents we had to previously read the programme in order to follow the plot as (1) it isn’t easy to follow dialogues when they are sung and (2) they sang in Italian. Now, all you have to do is to sit comfortably and listen to the music while reading the plot much as if you would watch a movie in original version with subtitles. Dutch society is one step beyond regarding pragmatism.

See in the scheme of the theatre where the screen is located (as you may imagine I couldn’t take pictures of the screen).

Drawing of Lucent theatre.