The Baltimore Opera Company's opening performance of Verdi's darkly beautiful 'La forza del destino' was nearly ruined for me by a sound not typically associated with this work: laughter. No, I'm not talking about the mild comic relief Verdi intended, a la Shakespeare, in a couple of scenes involving an out-of-sorts friar. The giggles and guffaws came instead in the midst of deadly serious business. I consider the primary culprit to be supertitles, the translations of the text projected above the stage. Sometimes I think people were better off not knowing every line in an opera.

But I blame audiences, too, since they are invariably old enough to know that operas from centuries past were often based on stories that, to modern sensibilities, seem far-fetched or even a little absurd. To be bothered now by plot devices that pleased the public generations ago suggests a mix of smugness, lack of knowledge and immaturity. To paraphrase novelist L.P. Hartley, opera is like a foreign country -- they do things differently there. Laughing old loud at a Verdi tragedy is akin to making fun of people just because they come from someplace else.

The line in 'Forza' that started the laughter Saturday night at the Lyric Opera House came at one of the most introspective and lyrical passages in the score, when the doomed Alvaro contemplates his misery. The original words from the libretto are probably best translated as 'Life is hell for those who are unhappy.' The translation used here (if memory serves) was 'Life is miserable when you are unhappy.' Either way, it's not a great line -- in English. And I can understand why it would strike some folks as comical. I still wouldn't disturb a performance by laughing, or blurting out, as the man behind me did, 'Boy, that's profound.' The point, expressed by Alvaro in more poetic Italian, is that the heavy curse of a cruel fate has made him feel that living without his beloved Leonora is worse than not living at all. When people are robbed of what gives them happiness, life is hell. Not such a belly laugh, now, is it? I hope the opera company will replace that supertitle translation in the remaining performances, and just get the gist across, not worrying about the closeness of the translation. Or just remove it entirely. Nothing, at any rate, should disturb Antonello Palombi's gorgeous singing in that scene.

Later in the performance, the audience got all giggly in scenes involving Leonora's vengeful brother Carlo and his determination to kill Alvaro, one of the prime motivations driving the whole opera. Let's see: Alvaro accidentally killed Carlo's father while trying to elope with Carlo's sister, Leonora; Carlo doesn't buy the accident story, but does believe that Alvaro and Leonora have been carrying on a sinful relationship that dishonors the family name. He particularly despises the fact that Alvaro is a mulatto, one more dishonor in his mind. Carlo believes totally that only by killing Alvaro and Leonora can justice be done. Funny, funny stuff.

Gee, I seem to recall something about people killing each other overseas somewhere, RIGHT NOW IN OUR VERY OWN 21ST CENTURY, because of ethnic hatreds, supposed slights to family honor, oaths of vengeance. Too bad Saturday night's crowd of supposed opera lovers couldn't see past the creaky elements in 'La forza del destino' to find its dramatic truths, the truths that spoke so powerfully to Verdi's imagination and inspired one of his greatest works.