I feel that this act as it is does not convince me and cannot convince the listener.

The above is a quote from Puccini himself, as he struggled with the impossible last act of Turandot. The problem he faced is that the most sympathetic, most Puccini-like heroine in the opera is murdered late in the story, and he faced the impossible task of bringing the audience around to accepting the climactic love duet would be sung by and to her killer, the "Cold Princess" herself.

Some reviewers believe he pulled out some of his Puccini magic, wrapping meaning and melody around to create a strange synthesis between the kind gentle slave-girl Liú, who gave her life for love, and the princess Turandot who has been up to this moment executing would-be suitors right and left. But any such legerdemain took place after Puccini's sudden and untimely death; he left this his last opera uncompleted.

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Here's all the opera quotes in Part I of my current draft. (In Part III someone will give partial translations in English, and also utter the words, "Nessun dorma.")


...“La tua pronuncia è unica…” he started. Then he beamed, operatically. “La donna è mobile,” he said instead. “Muta d'accento!”

“Tu pure, o Principessa,” Giulio said, sounding like he was flirting with me. “Nella tua fredda stanza, guardi le stelle.”

For a moment his expression was serious. “Vissi d’arte,” he told me softly.


Rigoletto and Tosca are in the Public Domain and are quite safe. And, as is the nature of opera arias, the public name is the same as the first line of "Vissi d'arte," "La donna é mobile," and "Nessun dorma."

The most-quoted part of "Nessun dorma" is the second stanza, containing "il nome mio nessun saprà!" Which I will not quote in the novel, nor will I use any of the popular English translations. My in-universe excuse is that Penny has found the only street singer in Venice who doesn't know much English. At the moment I'm considering having him conflate with a later verse and say something like, "No-one but you shall know my name."

I actually look forward to taking flack for an "incorrect" translation. That means that a fellow opera buff will have read the thing. Well, doesn't take that much of a buff; it's probably the most famous opera aria in the world. All three are way, way up there; they are the kind of excerpts people would recognize, from art dealers to gondoliers to, well, many of my readers.

It is there because it advances the plot and supports the theme, because playing with language and the embedded meaning in artworks are both part of the process of problem and solution, the conflict if you will. And because it falls within the class of material which can achieve "pleased recognition."

This is true across all sorts of fiction. It isn't just a trivia game the reader is playing for points. Say you are doing a story set in the 40's and you mention "In the Mood" is playing on the radio. Most readers who have chosen to read a story set in the 40's will recognize the name and remember the song. They will run the gamut, of course, from just starting to learn about the period and struggling to remember key details, to being extremely familiar with the period and wishing the author had made a less obvious choice. But for all there will be that moment of recognition, of knowing the reader and writer are on the same page, sharing and communicating a similar understanding of the material.

You would expect a globe-trotting story to expect you to have heard of Venice and know it has canals and gondoliers. And that you are going to see people saying "hello" in German. And set in Athens, someone is going to bring up the Persian War, Greek gods, Homer, and Ouzo. And you expect to learn a few things you didn't know before, but also be presented with things you are happy to recognize.

And I'd venture there will be quite a few people waiting for Penny to finally share in their knowledge. In the scene above, she immediately recognizes something is up, but it isn't until Venice that the shoe finishes dropping.

Sing a Song

It is annoying.

Songs are copyright, of course. The music, the sheet music, the lyrics, most recordings. As are many things. ASCAP, however, is very protective. Basically, you can't quote a single line of a song in a work of fiction. Nor is it easy to get the legal rights if you chose to go that path (just figuring out who to contact is a chore).

Means you end up with scenes that are the narrative equivalent of those weird cigarette brands you used to see in movies. But instead of having something that looks familiar but isn't the same, instead you have these weird gaps in the text where the characters (and narrator) are suddenly forced to talk around it.

"Like Shakespeare said, 'A rose by any other name.'"
"Or like John Lennon. The Beatle's song 'Imagine.' You know, 'something something something.'"

I have people quoting from Tacitus. Quoting from operas that are older than 1929. But then I get to certain scenes where I have five hundred Oktoberfest guests clapping and singing and all I can write is, "They sung that song by John Denver."

There are two other places where a song comes up the same way a quote from Shakespeare would come up or a plot line in a movie would come up in conversation. In one case my historian character is about to board a plane to Istanbul and -- just like everyone I hang out with -- immediately quotes from the song. Except of course she can't. She can only describe that she thought of the song or sung part of the song but I have to leave the actual words unsaid. There's another bit where an impromptu rendition of a Disney song crops up from an unlikely source. And if there's one rule to live by in copyright, it's don't mess with the mouse.

It reads very weird when you are in the middle of a fully-quoted conversation, is what I am saying. And it isn't because those words have a special poetry that, alone, can express my meaning. All I want to reference is the presence and meaning of the song in this particular decade, in the same way I'd give the color of an automobile or the author of a book or the ingredients of a pizza.

(It is especially odd since the title of the song occurs in the chorus. So if you write, "She sang 'Country Roads'" you are fine, but if you write, "She sang, 'Country Roads...'" you are in copyright violation?)

And, drat, it is worse. I've got a couple of scenes dependent on snippets of the librettos from three operas being quoted. It has to be the actual words, in the original Italian, for them to work. And it turns out that although Puccini is indeed in public domain, "Nessun Dorma" -- is not. (It was completed after his death and bears a copyright renewal date in the 50's).

Yes, there is Fair Use. But it is notoriously murky. There is no bright line. No seven second rule or anything like that. It is determined by a judge evaluating the balance of four conditions (commentary, transformative use, damage, and extent).

It still annoys me that the Orangeman can play a recording of Pavarotti singing the thing, but I can't risk quoting as little as a single line in my novel.