Earlier this year, Boston Lyric Opera and MASARY Studios teamed up to reimagine operatic supertitles.

The project aims to integrate elements of scenic design with supertitles. Rather than treating translated text as a utility displayed apart from the stage, MASARY Studios designed animated typography styled and paced to match the emotions of the singing.

The subtitles were tested on a March production of “Das Lied von der Erde” that centered on three characters. The production used two large venue 4K Epson projectors converged into a single image to carry the typography across the set, along with a third projector powering a rear projected window built into the scenery through which singers could perform.

“Operas are sung in Italian, German and French, and translation has always been treated as a utility, something to be read rather than experienced,” said Sam Okerstrom-Lang, cofounder of MASARY Studios, per an official press release. “Our goal was to make the supertitles expressive, to animate the type itself and embed it into the scenery, allowing the words to carry the emotion of the story rather than just explain it.”