Book Review: Operatic Italian by Robert Stuart Thomson (Godwin Books, 453 pp., ISBN 0-9696774-7-2)
Have you ever felt a sense of trepidation when approaching an Italian libretto, whether in learning a role, teaching a role, or in preparation for attending the opera? If so, you are not alone, because there is a vast difference between standard usage of the Italian language and the language used in Italian libretti.
Well, no need to fear any longer! Robert Stuart Thomson has compiled an extensive road map on the subject of operatic Italian for readers of all experience and intellect in Operatic Italian. This informative and often humorous book takes the reader on a journey to clarity as Thomson unravels the mystery of the antiquated structure of Italian libretti.
Thomson, who holds a PhD in romance languages, has a real zest for opera. His approach is to educate the reader on the differences between Italian opera language and regular Italian language study. As the reader enters the world of IPA, pronunciation, obsolete words, and the addition and/or deletion of words often found in libretti, he will find an unending source of enlightenment.
This book at first glance may intimidate, as it is not a quick read. But the organization and writing style will educate even the faint of operatic Italian heart. To help the patient reader navigate the book, the author suggests readers follow one of two tracks at the beginning of each chapter. One track is for those who want a quick overview of the subject, and the other track is for those who desire a deeper approach to the language or who perhaps have more extensive experience with Italian.
On the surface this book may seem like an Italian grammar book, but Thomson goes beyond a typical grammar lesson. “The main purpose of this book is to present the main grammatical point of operatic Italian in jargon-free language and progressively complex steps,” he writes. “Certainly my approach is quite different from the approach of traditional grammar or the (for me) perplexing complexities of the structuralists’ school of language learning. Operatic Italian is mostly about the Italian language: its words and their meaning, its grammar, and idiosyncrasies—how it expresses things.”
Each chapter is filled with musical and libretto excerpts from Italian opera. Thomson’s use of examples is four fold—first, “to offer a precise translation in English”; second, “to use IPA for pronunciation help”; third, “to provide music with staff lines to help the reader learn the language in its musical context”; and fourth, “to help the reader to learn correct stress for Italian words that does not follow the norm of the stress being on the second-to-the-last syllable.”
Thomson begins with a chapter on recognizing the parts of speech, followed by subsequent chapters about nouns, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and verbs. He dedicates six chapters to verbs because, as he explains, “If you understand how they work, all the other parts of speech fall into place.” Included in certain chapters are dictionary-like pages of nouns that are not commonly found in Italian dictionaries and adjectives that are particularly suited to opera due to their deeper and more complex meanings.
The chapters are not long but so full of material that the reader will want to take time to absorb and understand all that is presented. There are quizzes included at the end of select chapters for the reader to test comprehension, with a key to the answers found at the end of the book. This way the reader can monitor his progress in understanding the material presented.
Particularly interesting as more of an overview are the chapters on idioms: “What Is Lost in Translation” and “What to Appreciate in Libretto.” Thomson maintains that libretti share certain peculiarities and that even though an audience can read the subtitles, they are “incomplete in meaning and imperfect in synchronicity; it is only studying the original libretto that one can appreciate opera in depth.”
This book will educate and enlighten any reader, teacher, or singer who loves Italian opera and wants to find out and understand more about the complexities of Italian libretti. Take the journey and follow Thomson’s map—and find that any Italian libretto danger encountered may be due only to the innocence of the traveler.
For more information, visit
www.godwinbooks.com/operaticitalian.html.
