Photo by Herman J. Engel
Press
“Speaking of supertitles, Sonya Friedman’s
are the state of the art…”
New York Times
“As operagoers know, there are supertitles and supertitles.
These, by Sonya Friedman, gave the essence of the dialogue without cribbing
every word, and the projections were expertly timed. That the audience
got the point was evident from the bursts of well-timed laughter. Wagner
is funny on occasion, a trait lost on most English-speaking audiences.”
St. Paul Pioneer Press: The Minnesota Orchestra performs “Das
Rheingold”
Sonya Friedman had been working since September crafting
the subtitles that proved to be one of the big hits of the Metropolitan
Opera’s four-night televised “Ring” cycle… The
subtitling was notable for its clarity and pithiness …making Wagner’s
often complex language immediately graspable.”
The New York Times: The Word on “The Ring”
“One of Miss Friedman’s talents, shown both
here (New York City Opera’s supertitles for “Cendrillon")
and in her subtitles for Metropolitan telecasts, is her shrewd sense of
how much of the libretto an audience really needs to have. A full translation...would
keep the eye fastened on the screen at the expense of the production.
Too few words would give a skimpy, haphazard impression…Miss Friedman’s
compromises struck me as perfect. Key arias were given in some detail…but
the screen went blank when singers lapsed into the kind of lyrical repetition
that opera composers are so fond of. At one stroke…one of the most
vexing problems in opera has been resolved.”
New York Times: It’s Nice to Know What Is Happening
In an Opera