Today’s Puccini’s 150th birthday. To commemorate the occasion NPR’s Performance Today had an interview with noted Puccini expert Fred Plotkin. During its course Plotkin followed the now conventional practice of pronouncing Puccini’s last opera with its final t articulated. While this practice is pretty small beans in the course of human events it’s pedantic and based on how the name was pronounced before Puccini got to it rather than on how he wanted it pronounced.
Listen to this excerpt from the first complete recording of Turandot in 1938, just 12 years after the opera’s premiere. Note the absence of a final consonant. Patrick Vincent Casali has written a long article (Opera Quarterly 13 (4): 77–91, 1997) detailing Puccini’s intention that his opera be pronounced Turando[t]. Here’s a 1962 interview with the Met’s John Gutman and Rosa Raisa the first Turandot:
GUTMAN: In addition to being the very first Turandot, I know,
Mme Raisa, that you appeared in other world premieres and several
American premieres. Would you tell our audience, please, what some
of those premieres were?
RAISA: My pleasure, Mr. Gutman. In addition to Turando[t], which
is pronounced the way I pronounce it and also [the way] it was
pronounced by Puccini and Toscanini, so, [therefore] it is really
“Turando[t],” not Turandot!”
GUTMAN: [taken aback] Thank you very much, Mme Raisa. This
interests me very much. I know that this has been a controversy for a
long time and . . . ah, we certainly take your word for it, since you were
the original Turando[t].
RAISA: Thank you.
Here’s another with Robert Lloyd and Dame Eva Turner a famous Turandot who was at the opera’s first performance.
LLOYD: Dame Eva, there’s one little problem we have to solve before
we can have this conversation.
TURNER: Yes?
LLOYD: I’ve noticed that you say Turando[t].”
TURNER: Yes.
LLOYD: And I say “Turandot.” Can you explain why?
TURNER: Yes. Well, because in my day it was always “Turando[t].” And
you see, I was at the first performance that Toscanini conducted, and
[pause] it was “Turando[t].” And whenever [sic] I sang it for the first
time, or whenever I sang it, I say “Turando[t].” And, I think I have to
confess, I like it. More especially when it involves a musical line, to
keep the continuity going. It isn’t quite so chopped. But of course, it
isn’t quite so Chinese [laughs].
Remember, we are discussing an opera by Puccini not a play by Gozzi. The source of the story is irrelevant to how Puccini and his librettists wanted Turandot pronounced. As far as can be determined the final t was silent. This mispronunciation seems to be the fault of Erich Leinsdorf who inserted it into his 1960 recording of the opera. It’s now tradition to use it. But remember Toscanini’s definition of tradition: Yesterday’s mistake. And he should know – he was there.
Sorry, but it is indeed pronounced Turandot (with the last T pronounced), no matter what Mme. Raisa or Maestro Toscanini said. The opera is based on a fable by the Venetian writer Carlo Gozzi. There is no silent T in Italian or in Venetian dialect. Some people chose to pronounce it with an O ending because they like how it sounds in the music: “Disgelo Too- Ron- Doh’ leaves the mouth of the tenor open to hold the note longer. But “Disgelo, Too-Ron-DoTE” is more emphatic. and in keeping with the flow of the score. Puccini put a rest after the name is spoken throughout the opera.
The pronunciation of the final T in Turandot is not dependent on the source of the story, but rather on the wishes of its composer. Since he didn’t live to hear its performance that of Toscanini is likely dispositive. Also there are numerous points in the score where “Turandot” is not followed by a rest. For example the Mandarin’s “Turandot la pura” in the first act and Calaf’s first two shout’s of “Turandot” at the end of the same act. Gozzi and the Venetian dialect are irrelevant to what the opera’s creator wished. Should we substitute “Macbeth” (English) for “Mabetto” (Italian) in Verdi’s opera? After all he called the opera “Macbeth” and then never used the word again. Its Verdi not Shakespeare that’s authoritative here. In “Otello” it’s “Otello” (Italian) throughout the opera. In “Falstaff” it’s “Falstaff” (English) all the way through. Verdi obviously was unconcerned about linguistic consistency. If to T of not to T is the question. The answer is not.
As a singer, I much prefer Turandot without the final t. The t breaks up the legato line when in a phrase, and is a somewhat irritating end at the end of a phrase. Why top off a gorgeously held high not by Franco Corelli, the ultimate Calaf, just to end it with a t sound?? This is an Italian opera and words usually end in vowels.
Puccini’s idea was not necessarily set in stone. He often gave singers much leeway when rehearsing a new opera so he might have changed his mind once he heard it both ways.
Kudos to Neil Kurtzman for framing this issue so clearly. As a matter of personal experience, I can say that I pronounced it “TurandoT” for most of my adult life until I read Casali’s careful article. I find the reasoning that eyewitnesses attest to Puccini’s preferring “Turando[t]” thoroughly convincing. I cannot imagine why the kinds of pertinent analogies Mr. Kurtzman cites do not apply here, and it bewilders me that someone as conversant as Mr. Plotkin would (apparently?) not view this that way. No Lady Macbeth singing the Verdi Lady is going to sing, “Andiam, andiam, Macbe-eth” towards the end of the Sleepwalking Scene if she’s singing it in Verdi’s original Italian. Rather — of course — she’s going to sing the original Italian line — “Andiam, andiam, Macbetto”.
It disappoints me that Mr. Plotkin has still not come back to address Mr. Kurtzman’s obvious points. Unfortunately, I’ve been confronted with a few equally stubborn opera fans of my own acquaintance who have actually refused — refused — to address the point whenever I’ve tried to frame the issue in the same way that Mr. Kurtzman does. I’d respect those like Mr. Plotkin more if they’d at least address that point, positively or negatively, rather than simply go on about Gozzi and Italian dialects, as if nothing pertinent has been added to the equation! Either come out and say that the composer’s own preference counts for nothing(!!!!!!!!), or say that Rosa Raisa, Arturo Toscanini and Eva Turner were uniformly liars!!!!!!!!!!!! I can see that both assertions may seem a little silly — and the latter ludicrously coincidental — but at least they’re more intellectually honest than what I’ve seen from those simply dismissing Casali’s article without even addressing Casali’s points — or Mr. Kurtzman’s.
Sincerely,
Stone
So nice to read this … I have always wondered how to pronounce Turandot, but never bothered to do any research. Too lazy, I suppose. I’m glad you filled me in and I’ll trust your blog entry. 🙂
[…] I can’t resist revisiting the pronunciation wars. Racette was dotting the final t in Turandot like a gatling gun – dot.com, dot.org, […]
Yet another word about the pronunciation of Turandot, when the Met re-broadcast the Raisa interview with John Gutman, they deleted her reference to the way it was pronounced by Puccini, Toscanini and that of the role’s creator. They should really count for something, but of course the Met knows better.
I did like Racette’s hostessing much better than the Mesdames Fleming and Graham who sound too grand. Racette sounds like a real person.
And yes, I did check coats at the Old Met and remember those old performances very well. My mind hasn’t gone yet.
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 🙂
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
And yet, though you sing “Il trovator”, when you refer to the title of the play, you say “Il trovatorE”, because that’s what the word is. Just because it’s pronounced a certain way when singing, doesn’t mean it’s pronounced that way when spoken, otherwise all the soft “r” sounds in French arias like “Toreador” and “Je crois entendre encore” will have to become hard and guttural.
Something to consider: if Puccini wrote that couplet and as “Turandotte”, and later truncated it to “Turandot”, isn’t that enough of a truncation? Imposing another truncation, removing the final T, to make it sound FRENCH of all things… is that really likely? Of course, further truncations when SINGING are likely and par for the course, but I don’t think this is what’s being talked about…
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.
why, if the t is not meant to be pronounced, was the name spelled with a t?
Good question. I can only guess the answer. I suspect Puccini and his librettists liked the way it looked; ie not Italian.
GOOD GUESS I GUESS. THANKS.. IWAS STRUCK BY THE WAY JOSE CARRERAS CAME DOWN ON THE T IN HIS TURANDOT VIDRO;THOUGHT HE’D CRACK HIS TEETH.
WITHOU THE T,HOW DOES ONE PRONOUNCE THE SYLLABLE DO?
Dough.
Excellent comments by Mr. Kurtzman. Let me just add: Altoum is also spelt in the french way in the libretto. As said – what decides here are the testimonies and not linguistic arguments.
In my opinion it is not improbable that had Puccini had lived to supervise the publication of the score, he would have decided to change the spelling to “Turandò”
In any case, the written T remains a visual effect.
I am familiar with both sides of this argument and have used both pronunciations. But as a practical matter (And I have sung in this opera dozens of times and in several productions professionally) if rehearsal time is short (Is there ever enough?) it is wiser to have everyone pronounce the final T because if just one person in the ensemble pronounces the T, then the audience will hear it. But this above all, pick one and be consistent. It’s true, for what it’s worth, that Puccini did write that little couplet to his librettist rhyming “cafe di notte” with “Turandotte.”
It was a French book that brought the West the name of “Turandot” (Les mille et un jours, by François Pétis de la Croix, 1710). Before that, she was called Khutulun. Besides changing her name, he also changed the original story of her wrestling her suitors, and instead had her pose riddles to them.
de la Croix’s character was *the* Turandot for 50+ years, until Gozzi wrote his play in 1762. It seems entirely possible that the Italians continued to pronounce her name the way they had always heard it: the French way (silent t).
This would explain why Puccini and Toscanini supposedly both pronounced the name as Turan-dough. As proof of this, there are interviews with Rosa Raisa, the soprano who played Turandot at the premiere and who knew Puccini well. The other proof is that Toscanini did it that way at the world premiere, which in turn is established by eyewitnesses and the Ping/Pang/Pong recordings made right afterwards. Ghione, Capuana, Erede, and Serafin (the conductors of the first 4 full recordings) all used the silent t as well.