Sonya Haddad
Sonya Haddad (November 9, 1936 – June 15, 2004) was a respected translator and surtitler for opera in New York. She was born in Canton, Ohio, and grew up in Akron, graduating from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in 1958. She worked in classical music at Columbia Records and at WQXR, The New York Times’ radio station. From 1960 to the early 1970s she was part of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, and she lived part of the time in Rome as an interpreter. In 1973 she acted as a courier in the John Paul Getty III kidnapping case. Haddad spoke German, Italian, and French.
She began working at the Metropolitan Opera in 1994 and became one of the leading figures in her field. Haddad also wrote surtitles for the Washington National Opera, La Scala in Milan, and PBS’s Great Performances. She joined Opera News as an editor in 1998 and remained a research associate there until her death in 2004, living in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Colleagues praised her precise and elegant titling, which enhanced the audience’s experience.
Her work included surtitles for many operas, such as The Queen of Spades, War and Peace, Falstaff, I vespri siciliani, Capriccio, La donna del lago, Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Lo frate 'nnamorato, and Conrad Susa’s The Dangerous Liaisons.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:36 (CET).