“Il trittico (Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi)” by Giacomo Puccini

Notes on the Libretto

Preparing the Italian–English text of Il trittico revealed the unmistakable traces of an older OCR source. Some errors were almost comic in Gianni Schicchi: the name Schicchi itself appeared in such forms as “Sohioohi” and “Sehioohi,” while Signa repeatedly became “Slgna.” Elsewhere an exclamation point was mistaken for a letter, producing Niente da farei for Niente da fare! and even È casa miai for È casa mia! Similar substitutions affected the Latin of Suor Angelica, where Requiescat in pace and Sancta Maria had also been corrupted. Comparing the two languages line by line made many of these faults particularly conspicuous.
The parallel text also exposed places where the English departs more substantially from the Italian. In Il tabarro, “Sciò!”, used while sending Gherardino away, had been rendered “Sh!”; the Italian is closer to “Shoo!” and describes dismissal rather than silence. More strikingly, Schicchi's final “È casa mia, vi caccio via!” appeared as “It's my house, it's my house!”—losing the essential second thought, “I'm throwing you out.” Both passages were reconsidered during the revision.

Even small details required attention: Mimì was restored with its proper accent in the Italian text, while repeated capitalization and letter-recognition errors were regularized without attempting to erase genuine differences between the Italian and English texts.