ABOUT

Prescott Studio was founded in 1996 with the aim of making a qualified contribution to the young practice of language mediation for the live performing arts, the best-known form of which are the surtitles. This was possible thanks to the pioneering experience in this field of the company founder, Mauro Conti, who made his debut as an author of surtitles in 1987 for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino – the same festival that in 1986, a year earlier, upon the request of Zubin Mehta, saw the introduction in Europe of this particular technical expedient, three years after its absolute debut at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto (1983).

In almost than three decades of activity (1996-2025), Prescott Studio has created surtitles for about 1900 productions at a predominantly international level, collaborating with nearly 220 conductors, 280 directors and dealing with about 160 performance spaces – at major theatre institutions in Italy as well as abroad, such as Paris, Berlin, Prague, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Lisbon, London, Athens, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Santiago de Chile, Muscat (Oman), Al-Manamah (Bahrain).

The at least 390 authors addressed to date cover a broad spectrum of genres: musical theatre (from opera to musical), spoken theatre (from monologues to the most complex international productions), puppet theatre, non-European theatre traditions (such as Japanese kyogen), cabaret, and concert practice (from oratorio to opera in concert form). Equally broad is the historical spectrum embraced by the works tackled (from classical tragedy to the latest challenges in contemporary theatre) and the range of spaces in which they have been performed (from small ateliers to large open-air ancient theatres, passing through traditional Italian-style theatres or modern concert halls).

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Competence, experience, autonomy

Competence of its director, Mauro Conti (a musicologist with expertise in publishing, theatre and education), and of the company entire staff. professional musicians and translators, as well as audio-video and computer consultants, made possible the efficient use of multiple technical supports: video projection, individual wired displays, multilingual wireless devices, led-walls, timecoding, hybrid systems.

Experience. Competitive experience at European level, built on countless stages, through university-level workshops and international collaborations. This solid professional reality allows Prescott Studio to tackle effectively even complex genres such as musical or Singspiel or opéra-comique, where sung parts alternate closely with spoken parts.

Autonomy in managing most of the processes that lead the audience to read the right thing, at the right time and with the right timing: realisation of the timing, translation, adaptation of the translation, quality control of the adaptation, realisation of the presentation files, textual and timing optimisation (in studio and during theatre rehearsals).

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A publishing house in the digital field

Defining Prescott Studio as a publishing house in the digital field is a conscious choice. The sense of responsibility in front of the text electonically published coincides indeed with what a publishing house must have, which does its utmost to make the right choices for the benefit of its audience – in our case those that ensure optimal usability, trying at the same time to respect, as much as possible, the authors of the theatrical event and the creators of the staging.

Very early this led Mauro Conti and his collaborators to the development of an actual method for dealing with the surtitles of a theatrical event. This method, covered in university courses or seminars, identifies the timing (establishing when the audience should read what) as the starting point for any subsequent step, including translation. The translation itself, even if complete, undergoes editing, namely an adaptation which takes into account both the evaluation of functional reading times and the layout of the visualised text.

The delicate and fascinating balance between timing, translation, adaptation, reading time and layout is a process of constant variation of each parameter. It begins in studio and ends in theatre after the dress rehearsal or after the debut – and then continues at each new performance. It is an art of compromise that finds its creative stimuli in the very limits of the system.