Mediated Translation between Italian and Russian Languages

La forza del destino was commissioned to Giuseppe Verdi by the St Petersburg Imperial Theatres in 1861, and premiered in November 1862, at the Bolshoy Kamenny Theatre. The opera was written on a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, and draws its subject from the Spanish drama Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, by Ángel de Saavedra, through an Italian version by Faustino Sanseverino, and with insertions of fragments from Schiller’s trilogy Wallengstein. In this paper I analyse the genesis of the opera, considering the typical derivation of Italian operatic librettos from pre-existing literary works, a process that combines mediated and inter-semiotic translation. This allows me to show the artistic resources offered by mediated translation in the field of stage literature. On another level of discussion, given that for the Premiere Apollon Grigor’yev translated the libretto from Italian to Russian, I consider the role of translation on the reception of this subject by the local audience.