- 著者
-
伊藤 由紀
- 出版者
- 日本比較文学会
- 雑誌
- 比較文学 (ISSN:04408039)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.51, pp.106-120, 2009
<p> In the 1910s in Japan, attempts were made to perform European operas by translating their lyrics into Japanese. One of the leaders of the movement, Kobayashi Aiyû (1881–1945) translated 15 librettos for grand and comic operas during the decade. Although some of the pieces from those works were widely sung in prewar Japan, there have been few studies about Kobayashi's translation.</p><p> In this paper, we will discuss the libretto of Franz von Suppé's comic opera <i>Boccaccio,</i> translated by Kobayashi in 1915 at its Japan premier, to understand how Kobayashi rendered lyrics with meters and rhymes into non-accentual Japanese language.</p><p> Although a song from the work, <i>"Beatori nêchan"</i> ("Holde Schöne, hör diese Töne"), is still known today, we find that the lyrics of the piece in Kobayashi's libretto are more dignified than today's colloquial version.</p><p> Prosodic analysis suggests that Kobayashi used the English translation of the libretto (1880, by Dexter Smith) as a direct source, rather than its original text written in German (1879). Therefore, Kobayashi's lyrics have the same alteration of versification from the German libretto as the English version. Moreover, Kobayashi sometimes seems to have ignored the syllable number required by Suppé's score. Accordingly, his lyrics presented some difficulty in singing so that singers might have to alter the wordings.</p><p> Despite all these problems, Kobayashi was good at songs about love or nostalgia. Therefore, <i>"Koi wa yasashii nobe no hanayo"</i> ("Hab' ich nur deine Liebe") from the same work has been sung in his original lyrics until today.</p>