To opera buffs, Nes­sun Dor­ma has always been one of the great arias, but my, how the song’s pro­file was raised by its use as the theme song to the 1990 World Cup. That new audi­ence, num­ber­ing in the scores of mil­lions, asso­ci­at­ed the piece inex­tri­ca­bly with the one voice, that of Ital­ian tenor, Luciano Pavarot­ti. Many artists have record­ed their own ver­sions of the song – before and since — but it’s Pavarot­ti who is gen­er­al­ly cred­it­ed with per­form­ing the ulti­mate ver­sion of this song. The per­for­mance I embed below, from a show in Paris in 1994, shows exact­ly why it’s a jus­ti­fied claim. Pavarot­ti deliv­ers an emo­tion­al­ly charged and haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful piece of musi­cal the­atre. Check out the emo­tion on his face at around the 2.40 to 2.50 mark.

Inci­den­tal­ly, for me, Nes­sun Dor­ma does not ben­e­fit from an Eng­lish trans­la­tion or an under­stand­ing of the song’s con­tex­tu­al mean­ing in Gia­co­mo Puccini’s Turan­dot (though it con­cerns a prince, Calaf, and his attempts to win the hand of Princess Turan­dot), so I pre­fer to pre­serve its enig­mat­ic majesty by ignor­ing its mean­ing and just let­ting it be. It’s tru­ly pow­er­ful on its own.

Back in 2009, a few days after my mum’s funer­al, my fam­i­ly and I, after a vis­it up to Blyth and on our way back, called into Durham Cathe­dral, sig­nif­i­cant for my mum’s stone­ma­son dad hav­ing worked on this fine build­ing. It turned out that it hap­pened to be the day before Bob­by Robson’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice, and they were rehears­ing for it as we arrived. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Nes­sun Dor­ma had been cho­sen to be a part of the memo­r­i­al ser­vice (per­formed I believe, by vocal trio, Tenors Unlim­it­ed). Thus, in one of the world’s great cathe­drals, and still raw from my bereave­ment, I heard the resound­ing strains of Nes­sun Dor­ma. An unfor­get­table moment.

Nes­sun dor­ma! Nes­sun dor­ma!
Tu pure, oh Principes­sa
Nel­la tua fred­da stan­za
Guar­di le stelle che tre­mano
D’amore e di sper­an­za

Ma il mio mis­tero è chiu­so in me
Il nome mio nes­sun saprà
No, no, sul­la tua boc­ca lo dirò
Quan­do la luce splen­derà
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà
Il silen­zio che ti fa mia

(ll nome suo nes­sun saprà
E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir)

Dilegua, oh notte!
Tra­mon­tate, stelle!
Tra­mon­tate, stelle!
All’al­ba vin­cerò!
Vin­cerà!
Vin­cerò!