By Teresa Blankmeyer Burke

I have been an opera fan since my senior year at Mills College, a small liberal arts college in the San Francisco Bay area, when I was required to take a course in music appreciation, despite being hard of hearing and having had 12 years of training in classical piano. I had lost my battle with the registrar, who insisted that everyone, regardless of hearing status, was required to take a course in music appreciation because of the wonderful reputation of the Mills College Music Department, former home to composers Darius Milhaud and Dave Brubeck, among others. While I had no problem with this requirement for my (hearing) fellow students, I saw this as an insurmountable obstacle. How was I possibly going to pass a course that required the ability to distinguish musical notes? Scanning through the music department offerings that semester, I saw Opera Appreciation 101, and signed up on the spot, reasoning that opera was at least partially visual, which upped my odds of passing. That course changed my life, but not for the reasons one might think.

It wasn’t the music that did it – a former music major, I was learning to live with the frustration that there were just some sounds I would not hear as well. It wasn’t the campy costumes or overblown sets, though they were certainly candy for the eye. It was the realization that I could have equal visual access that hooked me and grabbed me from the moment I set foot in the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. Finally, I could combine my musical memory with what was on stage without having to fight for accommodations; finally I could score some highbrow culture with my buddies and not have to ask, “What did I miss?” It was the Supertitles that did it. That, and writing a term paper on bioethics and La Boheme, which pretty much confirmed for me that bioethics was going to be my career path.

In case you haven’t seen an opera lately, Supertitles are the precursor to live captions. Sometimes called surtitles or electronic libretto systems, these debuted in 1983 at the Canadian Opera Company’s performance of Elektra in Toronto. They were popularized soon afterwards at the New York City Opera, directed by Beverly Sills, an opera diva who had recently retired from the stage. Despite criticism from opera purists, Sills defended the use of Supertitles as a way to make opera accessible to the people. From a Time Magazine article about Sills in 1984:

‘Do I want to tell someone who has worked on Wall Street until 5:30 to study the libretto or take a course in German?’ she asks. ‘Do I want people sitting in my audience with a libretto and flashlight?’

I cannot help but think that perhaps there was another reason she supported Supertitles – a reason closer to home. Many people are aware that Beverly Sills had a deaf daughter, Meredith (Muffy) Greenough, who attended the Sarah Fuller School in Boston. Obituaries paying tribute to Sills write of her family hardships, including the irony of her deaf daughter, who would never hear her mother sing. It is tempting to bash the press for once again reaffirming audist and ableist attitudes that play on pity, but I’ll resist that in order to emphasize another point. Going out on a limb here, I’ll wager one reason opera was one of the first mainstream cultural venues (ok, maybe not so mainstream) accessible to deaf and hard of hearing people is because Beverly Sills was mother to a deaf daughter. As a mother, she couldn’t do anything to make it possible for her daughter to hear her sing, but she could do something to make her beloved opera accessible to people like her daughter.

I’m still an opera buff. I get to the Santa Fe Opera (located just down the road a few miles from the New Mexico School for the Deaf) at least a few times a year. It took a several years of advocacy to get the Santa Fe Opera on board with English Supertitles once they installed their fabulous electronic libretto system (see here), but they’ve improved considerably now that it has been presented to them as an ADA access issue. For the most part, the Santa Fe Opera electronic libretto system now offers English and Spanish captions – a boon to me as I get ready for the WFD Congress in Madrid later this month. I count it as one of the blessings in my life that the two places where I reside have complementary opera seasons. Once I head back to DC for academic year, (and I can find the time), I head over to the Washington National Opera where they have Supertitles, no matter what language the opera libretto uses.

I never did see Beverly Sills perform live; I developed my passion for opera after she had left the stage. I know that some people will vilify her for the choices she and her husband made to send their deaf daughter to an oral deaf school that focused on speech and speechreading. I’m also aware that admitting a passion for opera labels me a geek, and being a hard of hearing opera buff sets the stage for some marvelous jokes at my expense (most of which I’m familiar with, thankyouverymuch.) I don’t even know that Beverly Sills’ decision to promote Supertitles in opera was the tiniest bit influenced by her experience as a mother of a deaf child; it is only a hunch on my part. Regardless of any of this, as an opera lover, I stand in gratitude to her for making opera accessible in so very many ways.

Rest in peace, Bubbles.

Teresa Blankmeyer Burke was inclined at a young age towards endless questioning, she opted to put this to good use and become a philosopher. After learning that philosophers can come to bad ends when they are not sanctioned by authority (witness Socrates), Teresa decided to acquire the stamp of philosophical legitimacy by pursuing a doctorate in philosophy at the University of New Mexico. She is currently writing a dissertation on bioethics and the deaf community, focusing on the ethics of genetic technology. As does any tenure-seeking philosopher, Teresa has prepared back-up career plans in case her day job as an instructor of philosophy at Gallaudet University doesn’t pan out. Her other employable skills include adobe mud plastering, copyediting, and making quesadillas with nontraditional ingredients.