Happy 35th birthday to Supertitles! 

Supertitles, sometimes called surtitles, were introduced on January 21, 1983, at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, with a production of Richard Strauss’s Elektra. The titles, by Sonya Friedman, were projected on a giant screen above the stage, using 800 glass slides.

The director of COC, Lotfi Mansouri, wrote, “The audience response was overwhelming. ‘At last I could understand everything!’ was a typical response.”

Beverly Sills was so impressed that she brought supertitles to New York that September, for Massenet’s Cendrillon. The titles were again by Friedman.