Effectively, Lisa, Walter and other Germans sang in a German translation of Alexander Medvedev's Russian-language libretto.
Denisov was a devoted Francophile and at one point contemplated creating a triptych of Vian operas, though only "L'Écume," for which Denisov prepared his own French-language libretto, came to fruition.
With an English-language libretto by Joël Pommerat, based on his own French play, the new opera proved to be an intriguing but murky piece about achieving independence from one's father.
Mr. Giannini composed this one-act setting of the familiar fairy tale on commission from CBS Radio in 1938, using an English-language libretto by Robert A. Simon, then the music critic of The New Yorker.
The company's music director, James Levine, conducts an excellent cast of North American singers, including Paul Appleby, Layla Claire, Stephanie Blythe, and Gerald Finley, who are charged with parsing the ornate and brilliant English-language libretto, by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman; the engaging production is by Jonathan Miller.
This year, that honor goes to Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress," a neoclassical morality tale (with an ornate and brilliant English-language libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman) inspired by Hogarth's eponymous suite of paintings, the Faust legend, and the "number operas" of Mozart and Handel.
At 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., Daryl Roth Theater, 101 East 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200, funkeymonkeys.com; $20. 'HANSEL AND GRETEL' (Friday and Tuesday) There is a feast of arias as well as gingerbread in this production by the Metropolitan Opera, which has paired Engelbert Humperdinck's music with an English-language libretto to make the work appealing to children.
It has an English-language libretto by Blake Morrison after the novella of the same name by Jules Verne.
It is scored for mezzo-soprano and 16 instrumentalists and sets an English-language libretto by the Scottish poet Jackie Kay based on her script for a television programme about a woman jailed for killing her violent husband.
There are, in general, three ways that opera buffs typically encounter English versions of European-language librettos from earlier eras, which were mostly written in verse.
A generation ago, when the appearance of simultaneous translations of foreign-language librettos above the stage had the interested public at daggers drawn, the critic David Hamilton spoke a judicious word: "They're the right answer to the wrong question".
