They’re ubiquitous now, but operatic supertitles are actually only 20 years old, and it’s easy to forget how such a simple invention changed the face of the entire form. Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company was the first to try the idea back in 1983, and the practice spread quickly despite the objections of purists, making even the completely uninitiated able to follow the often convoluted plots unfolding on stage. But a technology that most operagoers take for granted now is far more complicated and accident-prone than most of us realize, and it was only fairly recently that supertitles entered the computer age.