Where did the Italian sound as we know it stem from and how did it spread? We have no clue.

Lorenzo Da Ponte, hands down the greatest Opera librettist of all times, was born and raised in the Venice Republic: an area of Italy where does not occur the syntactic germination (exquisitely oral phenomenon for which, in standard spoken Italian, a casa sounds akkàsa and da capo eventually became daccapo, making the doubling explicit in the orthography.)

In fact, in that area, like in pretty much all others of Northern Italy, even spelled, orthographic doubles are completely omitted in the pronunciation (capelli turns into cavèi: read any Goldoni to believe).

YET, when writing the famous Cherubino's song lyrics (just to pick a tune that even your dog may be able to bark along)

Dònne, vedete

S'io l'ho nel cor,

Da Ponte proves to be perfectly aware that, in standard poetic Italian, 

the pronunciation of dònne matches exactly that of l'ho nel:

/dòNNe/ vedete 

s'io /lòNNel/ cor.

Which wouldn't be true in the Venice area.

So how, HOW did the germination-less-Venice-area native, Vienna employed, USA immigrant, New-York buried, Jewish-but-Catholic converted poet Emanuele Conegliano aka Lorenzo Da Ponte acquire the standard diction of literary Italian - and Herr Mozart along with him? Where did they draw from the sound that served as a scaffolding for every musical and dramaturgical aspect of their immortal trilogy?

(History helped keeping this secret by making the two neighbours, in Vienna, so no epistolary. And I cannot even begin to picture in my mind such work seX...ssions).

And even way before the 18th century, how did poets and their readers (mostly other poets) know how to write and read euphonic, plastic, standard, tridimensional poetry - in Italian?

How was the currency of this unspoken language mutually exchanged and understood, in its uncodified rules?

(Like... in which Italian read and spoke the enlightened Marie Therese to her mundane daughters?

Or take the just as well German-native speaker -but Latin educated-abbey Varesco: which Italian resounded in his mind when he conceived the libretto of Idomeneo, possibly the most P E R F E C T maze of Italian diction facts that I've ever happened to unlock for a cast and chorus, top to bottom, in its teeniest-tiniest details?)

WHAT was, WHERE was the source of that sound, which seemed to be common knowledge in absence of modern media?

(My assumption: was it somehow implicit in the writing itself?)

I've lost sleep over this question, that I've asked to the highest Italian linguistic authorities I've been able to get in touch with (who are objectively the highest alive), yet stays to this day unanswered: no one knows.

My Christmas gift to you, for what I can, is to put that very sound source, the way I have acquired it, understood it, deepened it, contemplated it, taught it, at your service,

through the institution of a private sound library.

From January 2022, all the subscribers to my newsletter will get a personal key to access a growing treasure of entire roles, arias and recits read by me, mostly and possibly on the music's given tempo - diction rules enunciated and explained, words insights and all.

Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo:

be well, prosper, envision, embrace, sing.

La Maestra

"Cantare Italiano - The Language of Opera"

(published by Rugginenti/Volonté&Co. - Milano - 2020)

(also in Italian edition, 2019)