How was Nessun Dorma edited?
The original has another verse and (if it’s performed as in the opera Turandot) there is a choir part in the middle. Starting with a karaoke orchestration, we deleted the intervening verse to shorten the piece, and as it would have been impossible to change the words that the choir was singing anyways. We also increased the tempo slightly and lowered the pitch by four semitones. While all other musical parodies we have done were sung in their original keys, that high B is a killer, especially live, but a high G is okay. [Even Pavarotti’s last appearance was a playback performance pitched down to a high A. But Pavarotti was ill, he was 71 years old, and it was freezing outside.] Curtis actually happened to find online (somewhat at random) an arrangement of Nessun Dorma including the voice (“Voce”) part transposed just as we performed it. For fun he altered the music further to include the lyrics and music just as it was ultimately performed (found below). The lyrics are a mix of real an
