[Crudblud]

You might be surprised to learn that Turandot has never come up in any conversation I have ever had with anyone I have ever met, so I haven't had to navigate this particular phonetic minefield as of yet.

 

[bigshot]

No one outside of Europe pronounces the o umlaut properly in Gotterdammerung.

 

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

No one outside of Europe pronounces the o umlaut properly in Gotterdammerung.

What about German speaking people outside Europe?

 

[PetrB]

You might be surprised to learn that Turandot has never come up in any conversation I have ever had with anyone I have ever met, so I haven't had to navigate this particular phonetic minefield as of yet.

and the only place it may elsewhere crop up is in a crossword puzzle, the pronunciation again a dead issue.

 

[Jobis]

So that's TryStan und I-Sold-Er by Varg-nuh

I think you mean 'Iseult' as it was in the original french tales.

 

[Tristan]

I always pronounced it "Turando" because I thought it was French and so the final-T was silent. I'm not sure why I thought it was French, but that's how I pronounced it. I now pronounce it with the "t" but I have nothing against the t-less pronunciation.

I wonder how the t-less pronunciation came about; in Persian, final-t is pronounced. French is the only language I know of where it isn't pronounced so I wonder if some people down the line made the same mistake I did...

It's an Italian opera based on a Persian story about a Chinese woman with a French-like pronunciation of her name. Oy.

 

[PetrB]

Depends upon what food I have in my mouth while talking....

 

[Mahlerian]

No one outside of Europe pronounces the o umlaut properly in Gotterdammerung.

Which, given your location, includes you as well....

 

[PetrB]

persian schmersian, she's Chinese!

The opera, In Italian, ergo, Italian rules of pronunciation, regardless of etymological origin.

 

[Guest]

Origin and pronunciation of the name[edit]

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.[1] However Simonetta Puccini, Puccini's granddaughter and keeper of the Villa Puccini and Mausoleum, has stated that the final "t" must be pronounced. Maestro Italo Marchini questioned her about this in 2002 at the Villa in Torre del Lago and she stated that in Italian the name would be Turandotta. In the Venetian dialect of Carlo Gozzi the final syllables are usually dropped and words end in a consonant, ergo Turandott, as the name has been made Venetian.

Goo' ol' wikipediat!

 

[moody]

I suppose if Toscanini and Puccini pronounced it Turando then Turando is good enough for me!

Who said they did---unlike 95% of members here I've been listening to opera for about 63 years and have only ever heard it with the dot pronunciation....does it matter ?

 

[Guest]

....does it matter ?

You even have to ask????

 

[suteetat]

Who said they did---unlike 95% of members here I've been listening to opera for about 63 years and have only ever heard it with the dot pronunciation....does it matter ?

Rosa Raisa who sang Turandot at the world premier under the baton of Toscanini did. She gave several interviews in the past and she always said that both Puccini and Toscanini always pronounced it Turando!
This has been well documented all over the place.

 

[Delicious Manager]

Silent 't's at the ends of words are French. Puccini was Italian. The final 't' should be articulated, just as it should be in Jorge Bolet's name (because he wasn't French either).

It is a source of constant annoyance to me when people pronounce words as if they are from a language other than the one from which they actually derive (eg 'ei' always pronounced as if it's German when, in fact, only German and Danish pronounce this letter combination as the English "eye") and pronouncing Arvo Pärt's surname name as if he's German and the 'ä' is an a-umlaut (ae). Listen to how Estonian and Finnish speakers pronounce this letter and you will hear it's quite different from the German one.

TurandoT.

 

[Elgar's Ghost]

Can you imagine if it would have been the third riddle for Calaf?

'How do you properly pronounce Turandot...oh, f...'

 

[moody]

Rosa Raisa who sang Turandot at the world premier under the baton of Toscanini did. She gave several interviews in the past and she always said that both Puccini and Toscanini always pronounced it Turando!
This has been well documented all over the place.

Well well,fancy that ,in which case why are you the only one to have noticed ?

 

[suteetat]

Well well,fancy that ,in which case why are you the only one to have noticed ?

well if you actually read this thread properly, a number of posts already mentioned this, even links to Raisa's interview etc so
true question should be why you have not noticed!
Not to mention number of articles/forum threads in Opera News, opera-L, wikipedia etc etc, this is an old topics....I would have thought anyone who have listened to opera as long as you have, would have known about this a long time ago!

Silent 't's at the ends of words are French. Puccini was Italian. The final 't' should be articulated, just as it should be in Jorge Bolet's name (because he wasn't French either).

One explaination that I came across was that the source of story for Gozzi's adaptation for Turandot the play which ultimately became source for Puccini was Les Mille et un jours by François Pétis de la Croix so Puccini kept the French pronounciation.

 

[DavidA]

I am no expert on Italian but on the Mehta recording Pavarotti pronounces it Tur-an-dott..

 

[Radames]

You might be surprised to learn that Turandot has never come up in any conversation I have ever had with anyone I have ever met, so I haven't had to navigate this particular phonetic minefield as of yet.

Really? Well if it happens don't argue. I almost got into a fistfight.

 

[Radames]

Who said they did---unlike 95% of members here I've been listening to opera for about 63 years and have only ever heard it with the dot pronunciation....does it matter ?

I have been listening for 30 yeas and have only heard it pronounced dot in performance. There is a radio host in VT - Peter Fox Smith- who always says Turandoh. He points to the lines in the opera where Turanot is rhymed with something - and it's always an o sound.

In the second act ping pang and pong sing:

Tutto andava secondo
l'antichissima regola del mondo
Poi nacque Turandot

Translation: "The ancient rule of the world succeeded itself again and again... then came Turandot."

Apparently early recordings had a silent "t". The first recording to sound the final "t" was the 1959 RCA
Nilsson/Bjoerling/Tebaldi set. It is speculated that Leinsdorf may have made the case for a sounded "t," possibly based on contemporaryGerman, Swiss and Austrain practice.