Talk:Quando me'n vo'

I have checked the RIcordi orchestral score, which is the definitive source (and which also matches the piano-vocal score). The punctuation of the text is now correct (notwithstanding what our modern Italian friend below thinks it ought to be), but I didn't know how to edit the title of the article. If someone can fix that, the article will be totally accurate. Davidonline (talk) 13:53, 14 November 2015 (UTC)David Bamberger

Title

The apostophe in the title of this article appears to be in the wrong place. The consensus from other articles is Quando me'n vò not Quando me n'vò As I'm not Italian, I hesitate to make the correction. Could someone more knowlegable please confirm or deny. Apuldram (talk) 14:38, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree. The current version came about after two moves on 24 October 2007; see: article history. The Italian and French Wikipedias seem to have it right: it:Quando me'n vo' and fr:Quando me'n vo'. Note that there is no accent on the "o" but an apostrophe after it. I also looked at a Ricordi piano score, and they use the same.

I suggest to move the article to Quando me'n vo'. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:08, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry guys, I am Italian and can say that neither “Quando me ’n vo” nor “Quando me ’n vo’“ are correct. This line can be rephrased in standard Italian as “Quando me ne vado”: “men” is a contraction of “me ne”, and “men” is the only way to write it. The apostrophe —“me ’n”— makes no sense, as nothing is dropped before “ne”; on the contrary, the element dropped is the vowel, “e”. As for “vo”, it’s the literary and Tuscan form of “vado”, created by analogy with “sto” (=I stay) and “do” (=I give); as such, the apostrophe makes no sense in this case as well, since no vowel or syllable was dropped. (By the way, “vo’” would be the ancient and literary form of “voglio” (=I want): in that case the apostrophe is needed.) You can see the correct spelling of that line in this Ricordi libretto published in 1942.--Didimo Chierico (talk) 19:44, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Your assessment may be right for contemporary Italian, but the Ricordi piano vocal score from 1917 at http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/scores/bhq3853/large/sco20139.gif (page 139) and Ricordi's full orchestral score from 1920 at scores:La Bohème (Puccini, Giacomo) (page 194) both show Quando me’n vo’. I note that it was you who changed the spelling of the Italian and French Wikipedia pages. I suggest that the spelling of this article be changed back to its previous version. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:16, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I managed to get hold of a book which could settle the dispute. It’s Libretti d'opera: dal Seicento al Novecento, Milano, “Mondadori”, 1997. It’a philologically accurate work, aimed at giving a text as close as possible to the original one. The libretto of La Bohème reads as follows (p. 1615): “Quando men vo soletta per la via”. As it seems, I got it right. --Didimo Chierico (talk) 19:50, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

My correction has nothing to do with contemporary spelling, as this form is only literary and poetic and could be found throughout the history of the Italian literature. Please note that you cited a piano vocal score, NOT the libretto, which I did — and this is a different kettle of fish. Illica and Giacosa could have the last word when it came to the printing of the libretto, but they obviously had no power over the way musicians spelled their words, which seems to be the case for your piano vocal score. Such musicians were obviously more comfortable with music than with poetry and literature. If you have a smattering of Italian, you can see how the contraction of “me ne” is correctly spelled here — the Dizionario d’Ortografia e Pronunzia has a traditional approach to spelling and pronunciation. It is true that you can find some instances of “me ’n” in some authors, but this spelling is definitely outnumbered by “men”. Didimo Chierico (talk) 19:12, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Signor Chierico is right. The correct spelling is Quando men vo — without the apostrophes. See the title of the Italian WP article, it:Quando men vo. The spellings with apostrophes were probably printers' errors which weren't caught in proofreading. (I'm an Italian-American with a degree in Italian language and literature, and an opera fan for over 50 years.) Lyttle-Wight (talk) 16:05, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Of course the Italian Wikipedia article uses "Quando men vo" because Chierico changed it there, and at the French Wikipedia. As to the objections against the Ricordi vocal score as an authoritative source: the full Ricordi score (1920) also uses "Quando me'n vo'" (act 2, page 194). I suggest to move the article back there. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:32, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

The TITLES of the other WP articles have been without apostrophes for many years: the Italian since 2007, the French since 2009. (Chierico edited the text only, not the titles). As the old saying goes, "50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong", and apparently 50 million Italians too, in having accepted those titles as correct for a decade. Also, the opera debuted in 1897. So why would scores from ca. 1920 be authoritative? I would think that Puccini's manuscript score or Giacosa's and Illica's manuscript libretto would be authoritative. I still maintain that those apostrophes were added later, either by accident or intentionally, perhaps due to the similarity to the French equivalent, "quand j'm'en vais ". So, I maintain that Chierico and I are correct — no apostrophes. In any case, I won't make any more edits to the English, French, or Italian WP articles. There's no use getting into a "pissing contest" (uno scontro). -- Lyttle-Wight (talk) 15:56, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

I think your reading of the edit history of the Italian and French articles is mistaken. Chierico moved the Italian article on 5 June 2014, see also here, and the French article on 6 June 2014, see also here. I recognize the difference in spelling between the 1942 libretto and the full score from 1920, but I don't see why the later libretto, which incidentally omits repeated phrases, would be more authoritative. I have no access to an earlier full score, which leaves "Quando me'n vo' " as the best-supported variant. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:12, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

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