Comments on: Turandot Without the T

By: Gerhart Wiesend

Gerhart Wiesend — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:55:00 +0000

True, Italians have problems pronouncing a final -t, -k or -s. They always add a soft “e” or so. A Turandot would thus always become a Turandot-e.

By: Neil Kurtzman

Neil Kurtzman — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:19:26 +0000

Dropping the final T makes the word much easier to sing. Virtually no Italian words end in a hard consonant. Trovatore, dropping the E, (which is the way the word is sung) is much easier for the singer than Turandot pronouncing the end T. And apparently, the La Scala pronunciation was the way both Puccini and Toscanini wished it sung. End of case.

By: Gerhart Wiesend

Gerhart Wiesend — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:50:11 +0000

When at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan recently, I asked how they pronounced Turandot there when it is performed. The unanimous reply was “Turando”. When I asked why, the reply was: this is the French pronunciation.
But Puccini was Italian, the librettists were Italian, and the première was at the Scala in Italy in 1926, conducted by Toscanini.

By: Gerhart Wiesend

Gerhart Wiesend — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:55:23 +0000

So you are not only an expert in internal medicine and opera, but also in liguistics. I hope no one who ventures to speak Italian has to hold a list with the above rules in his hand.
For the shift of accent, this is an early development in the indeuropean languages. To learn the proper emphasis on Italian words there is only one recommendable way: go to this charming country, talk to the equally charming people, dinrk their excellent wines and eat their exquisite food and they will love you when you speak only a few words of Italian. Luckily I live only 200 miles away from Verona. An English friend of mine, also a music lover and author of several books on Schubert, whom I took to Italy a few years ago, where he had never been before, could immediately communicate because he knows so many Italian operas almost by heart. The only thing the Italians have yet to learn is to elect proper governments. After 22 years of Mussolini they had over fifty years of corrupt Christian Democrats (and Mafia associates) followed by a doubtful Berlusconi, also close to Mafia circles. An excellent occasion to visit Italy will be January 15th 2012, when I racconti di Hoffmann, also known as Les contes d´Hoffmann will premier at La Scala. Unfortunately they took over the production of the opera La Bastille in Paris, which is splendid, but lacks a deeper interpretation. http://www.teatroallascala.org/en/season/opera-ballet/2011-2012/les-contes-hoffmann.html
But to return to Turandot. There is an authoritative passage in the English edition of Wikipedia:

Turandot. Origin and pronounciation of the name

Turandot is a Persian word and name meaning “the daughter of Turan”, Turan being a region of Central Asia which used to be part of the Persian Empire. In Persian, the fairy tale is known as Turandokht, with “dokht” being a contraction for dokhtar (meaning daughter), and both the “kh” and “t” are clearly pronounced. However, according to Puccini scholar Patrick Vincent Casali, the final “t” should not be sounded in the pronunciation of the opera’s name or when referring to the title character. Puccini never pronounced the final “t”, according to soprano Rosa Raisa, who was the first singer to interpret the title role. Furthermore, Dame Eva Turner, the most renowned Turandot of the inter-war period, insisted on pronouncing the word as “Turan-do” (i.e. without the final “t”), as television interviews with her attest. As Casali notes, too, the musical setting of many of Calaf’s utterances of the name makes sounding the final “t” all but impossible.[3] However Simonetta Puccini, Puccini’s granddaughter and keeper of the Villa Puccini and Mausoleum, has stated that the final “t” must be pronounced.[citation needed]

“In 1710, while writing the first biography of Genghis Khan, the French scholar François Pétis de La Croix published a book of tales and fables combining various Asian literary themes. One of his longest and best stories derived from the history of Mongol princess Khutulun. In his adaptation, however, she bore the title Turandot, meaning “Turkish Daughter,” the nineteen-year-old daughter of Altoun Khan, the Mongol emperor of China. Instead of challenging her suitors in wrestling, Pétis de La Croix had her confront them with three riddles. In his more dramatic version, instead of wagering mere horses, the suitor had to forfeit his life if he failed to answer correctly.

“Fifty years later, the popular Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi made her story into a drama of a “tigerish woman” of “unrelenting pride.” In a combined effort by two of the greatest literary talents of the era, Friedrich von Schiller translated the play into German as Turandot, Prinzessin von China, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe directed it on the stage in Weimar in 1802.”[4]

By: Neil Kurtzman

Neil Kurtzman — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:19:37 +0000

There are rules for the examples in Italian you cite. A ‘c’ followed by an ‘h’ is the equivalent of an English ‘k’ a letter not in the Italian alphabet. A ‘c’ followed by an ‘a’, ‘o’, or ‘u’ is again pronounced like an English ‘k’. A ‘c’ followed by an ‘e’ or ‘i’ is like an English ‘j’ another letter not in the Italian alphabet. If a ‘c is followed by an ‘i’ and then an ‘a’, ‘o’, or ‘u the first two letters are the equivalent again of an English ‘j’ – eg, giusto ciel. A ‘g’ followed by an ‘l’ or ‘n is not pronounced but adds a ‘y’ sound after the ‘l’ or ‘n’, like an expanded tilde in Spanish. This is not true if the ‘g’ is the first letter of the word such as gli. So Italian is pretty easy except for where to place the accent. There are rules for this but no Italian I know understands them other than linguists. They are very complex.

By: Gerhart Wiesend

Gerhart Wiesend — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:05:00 +0000

True, Spanish is spelt fairly logically. The use of the letters c and g is inconsequent, though. Italian spelling is slightly more complicated. Compare the use of the character c in Pitichinaccio, and stucco; bocca and baccello; of g in figlio, gustare and gestione.
My native German is worse, but by far more logical than French and English. We had a so called spelling reform in the nineties which only scratched the surface. Particularly inconsequent is the rendition of long vowels.

By: Neil Kurtzman

Neil Kurtzman — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:24:53 +0000

Not knowing anything about Czech, Estonian, or Finnish - Spanish seems to me the most logically spelled language. Look at a word in that tongue and you instantly know how to pronounce it. There are no Spelling Bees in Spain. English and French are a mess as regards spelling. Italian is much better, but the absence of accent marks except when an eccentric stress is placed on the last syllable causes ambiguity, eg, parola and tavola. Turandot is a name and thus can be pronounced anyway its owner (Puccini in this case) wishes.

By: Gerhart Wiesend

Gerhart Wiesend — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:45:56 +0000

As I see it, TurandoT is the Italian way of pronouncing the word, while Turando is the French version. A parallel is the pronunciation of the wine MerloT in Italian and Merlo in French, with Italian produce being considerably cheaper and often better than French counterparts. The French have a habit of writing all sorts of letters without pronouncing them. An extreme example is the plural of “oeuf” (egg). You write “oeufs” (five characters) and say one [ö], like the vowel in “boeuf” = beef. They must have a lot of time in France.
Sadly this French habit of writing unpronounced letters came into English after 1066 and has prevailed until today to the dismay of school children who have to write billions of unpronounced “e”s at the end of words like “like” etc. every day. The only languages with logical spelling seem to be Czech, Estonian and Finnish.

By: Neil Kurtzman

Neil Kurtzman — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 22:06:32 +0000

Thank you for your interesting comments. But I don’t think they’re germane. If the first singer to perform Turandot says neither Puccini nor Toscanini wanted the final T pronounced, the issue is settled regardless of the source of the story, the dialect it came from, or its spelling. I can also relate from personal experience that whenever Puccini’s final opera was discussed at the Met in the 1950s by singers, conductors, or other musicians the final T was not pronounced. This was only 30 years after the Maestro’s death and many at the Met had known or worked under Puccini. Of course anyone can pronounce the word anyway he wants, but as I’ve argued I think the correct way is without the last consonant.

By: Paul Mauffray

Paul Mauffray — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:21:59 +0000

According to Charles Osborne in his “The Complete Operas of Puccini” (1981) pp.256-57:

“One sometimes hears the heroine’s name pronounced without the final ‘t’. This is incorrect. In [Carlo] Gozzi’s play, the name is sometimes spelt ‘Turandotte’, and [more importantly, I may add] one of Puccini’s immortal couplets, addressed to [Renato] Simoni [one of the librettists], advises

‘Bevi una tazza di caffe di notte;
Vedrai, non dormi e pensi a Turandotte’
(Drink a cup of coffee at night;
You’ll see, you won’t sleep and think of Turandotte).

In conclusion, I would like to ask the following questions:

IF the author of the play, and the librettist, and the composer HAD wanted the name to be pronounced with the ‘T’ at the end like in the original ‘Turandotte’, HOW else could they have spelled that in Italian to make the ‘T’ articulated? To write ‘Turandotte’ would add an extra ‘e’ vowel.

Similarly, are there any Italian words which end with a ‘T’ that is not pronounced? I think not, and on the contrary, there are many of Latin origin which are pronounced with the final ‘T’ such as ‘vivat’.

VivaT TurandoT