Keene also made numerous guest appearances--conducting many world premieres--and wrote and translated libretti.
Translating librettos is a time-honored practice that takes enormous skill.
When supertitles were introduced, many opera insiders rightly predicted that the technology would render moot the argument for translating librettos to improve audience comprehension.
But Brundibár, she says, has never left her: she has translated the libretto into Hebrew, and is often called on to advise on productions around the world, most recently in Kosovo and Greece.
He also translated the librettos of several operas and, during the last 10 years of his life, himself wrote texts for performance.
Translating a libretto destroys the composer's careful mixing of words and music, the opponents charge.
Before titling, translating the libretto into the language of the audience was the preferred way to make an opera accessible.
(Ms. Malefane also helped translate the libretto.) Carmen's chief suitor, Don José, is now Jongikhaya (Andile Tshoni), a Bible-reading cop who lets the beguiling but rough-edged Carmen lure him into a smuggling operation.
Instead, it appears with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Mr. Sewell's production of "Amahl and the Night Visitors," with the dancers translating the libretto into American sign language as part of the choreography.
It relocates the tale's doomed romantic triangle to Khayelitsha, an industrial community near Cape Town; sets the action in and around a cigarette factory; and translates its libretto into Xhosa, a regional language distinguished by its abundance of pops and clicks.
For the Paris Opera he greatly expanded the score in 1827, with an augmented libretto translated into French, under the title "Moïse et Pharaon".
