“Turandot” by Giacomo Puccini

Notes on the Libretto

A careful editorial review of the existing Italian–English text of Turandot revealed several errors in transcription and translation. In the opening stage direction, palazzo (“palace”) had replaced piazzale (“square”), although the English text correctly described the palace yard. Elsewhere, optical character recognition had confused the letters Il with II, producing such readings as II lavoro and II vasto piazzale.

Not every unusual form, however, is an error. Timur’s Ed io cadeva affranto preserves an archaic first-person imperfect form. Modernizing cadeva to cadevo would make the grammar more familiar, but would also discard a legitimate historical reading.

Comparison of the Italian and English also exposed a more consequential mistake in Liù’s plea, Se questo suo strazio non basta. The possessive refers to Timur’s suffering, whereas an earlier English rendering mistakenly attributed the anguish to the person being addressed. A small grammatical distinction thus changes the emotional meaning of the passage.

A more substantial discovery concerned the ministers’ imagined celebration of Turandot’s marriage in Act II. Comparison with published libretti revealed missing passages describing the bridal chamber, a yellow silk coverlet, and a garden filled with whispered words of love. Restoring these lines also required attention to the interwoven voices of Ping, Pang, and Pong. Particularly revealing was the correction of già sei donna (“you are already a woman”) to già sei doma (“you are already subdued”), restoring the ministers’ expectation that Turandot’s proud resistance will finally be overcome.