“Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali” by Gaetano Donizetti

Notes on the Libretto

Donizetti’s Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali presents an unusual challenge for translation because much of its comedy lies not merely in what the characters say, but in the theatrical language they misuse. Dorotea’s indignant “Farmi far da comodino!” is a good example. Literally, comodino means a bedside table; here the joke reduces an aggrieved singer almost to a piece of stage furniture. I have therefore rendered the phrase as “to make me little more than stage furniture,” preserving an absurdity that the more neutral “supporting role” would lose.

The libretto repeatedly makes similar play with theatrical terminology. When Corilla demands una corona and una coda to prepare her entrance, Biscroma immediately seizes upon the ordinary meaning of coda (“tail”), protesting that they are not among dogs and cats. In translating such passages, I have tried to preserve both the theatrical meaning and the joke whenever English permits it.

The two-act version of 1831 expands Donizetti’s one-act Le convenienze teatrali of 1827 into a broader satire of operatic life. Singers quarrel over precedence, demand alterations, and abandon the production, while the impresario faces the consequences. Throughout my translation, period theatrical terms have been treated according to their dramatic context: spettacolo, for example, generally becomes “performance” rather than the misleading modern English “spectacle.” Guglielmo’s deliberately broken Italian presents the opposite problem: its grammatical peculiarities are part of the characterization and have therefore been preserved rather than silently corrected.