Nessun Dorma — Andrea Bocelli: Italian vocabulary & story

Nessun Dorma

by Andrea Bocelli

Language: Italian
Released: 1995
Genre: opera
Level: B1+
Difficulty score: 817

How to study this song

Learning “Nessun Dorma” means 40 entries at B1+ — 19 Italian words, 4 adjectives and 17 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. Work through the glossary first: principessa, stanza and stelle are the words you will lean on most. This one leans on its verbs: 17 distinct forms against 4 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level part of the list will already be familiar; the rest is what closes the gap.

The words of this song, in several languages

Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.

Vocabulary

IT	EN	ES	FR	PT	NL	DE
principessa	princess	princesa	princesse	princesa

What this song teaches you

Level · B1+

Vocabulary words: 19
Adjectives: 4
Word combos: 14
Expressions: 7
Verb forms: 17
Quiz questions: 35

Background

About the song

«Nessun dorma», "Let no one sleep", is a tenor aria from «Turandot», the last opera by Giacomo Puccini, written to a libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni and based on a 1762 play by the Venetian writer Carlo Gozzi. This card follows the version that Andrea Bocelli recorded in 1995 for «Viaggio italiano», his third studio album and the first he devoted entirely to classical repertoire. The aria is the opening track of the album, and Bocelli sings it with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the Russian conductor Vladimir Fedoseyev.

The opera is set in Peking in a legendary past. Princess Turandot has sworn to marry only a man of royal blood who can solve three riddles, and every suitor who fails is put to death. An unknown prince, Calaf, answers all three. When the princess begs to be released from her promise, he offers her a way out: if she discovers his name before dawn, he will accept death; if she does not, she must marry him. Turandot answers with a decree that nobody in the city may sleep that night until the stranger has been identified.

The aria opens the third act. Calaf is alone in the palace gardens at night while heralds repeat the order through the streets. He picks up their words and turns them into a reflection on the princess, who is also awake in her rooms, looking at the sky. His secret, he says, is safe: he will reveal who he is only when daylight comes, and he is sure that a kiss will melt her coldness. Offstage, a chorus of women laments that everyone will pay with their lives if the name stays unknown. Then the tenor calls on the darkness to end and the stars to fade, and closes on the word «vincerò», "I will win", which has carried the aria far beyond the opera house.

Musically the piece is short, around three minutes, and built on one long melody that grows each time it returns. Its final phrase climbs to a high B, which tenors traditionally hold for a long time before ending on an even longer A. English Wikipedia points out that Puccini’s score does not actually ask for those sustained notes: they are a performance tradition. Bocelli’s recording keeps them, and that climax is the moment most listeners remember.

For a learner of Italian, the text is a compact lesson in the poetic language of opera. It uses the present subjunctive to give an order to a third person (the title itself means "let no one sleep"), a series of simple futures for what dawn will bring, singular and plural imperatives addressed to the night and to the stars, and the shortened verb forms typical of librettos, where a word drops its final vowel to fit the music. It also shows the vocative «o» placed before a noun, a feature of formal and poetic Italian, and an old exclamation of sorrow that modern speakers use mostly in jest.

Verb forms

IT	EN	ES	FR	PT	NL	DE
dorma	may sleep, let sleep (subjunctive)	duerma	dorme (subjonctif)	durma	slape	schlafe
guardi	you look at	miras	tu regardes	olhas	je kijkt naar	du siehst an
tremano	they tremble	tiemblan	elles tremblent	tremem	ze trillen	sie zittern
è	is	es, está	est	é, está	is	ist

This card holds 13 more verb forms. You meet them when you play the song.

Did you know?

Puccini did not live to finish «Turandot». He died on 29 November 1924, leaving the final scenes incomplete, and the composer Franco Alfano completed the score from his sketches.

The premiere took place at La Scala in Milan on 25 April 1926, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. According to English Wikipedia, Toscanini stopped the performance in the middle of the third act, at the point where Puccini’s own music ended, and told the audience that the opera ended there because the composer had died. From the second performance onwards Alfano’s ending was played. The first Calaf, and therefore the first singer of «Nessun dorma», was the Spanish tenor Miguel Fleta.

The aria became a popular hit in 1990, when the BBC chose Luciano Pavarotti’s recording, made in 1972, as the theme of its coverage of the football World Cup held in Italy. According to English Wikipedia, that recording reached number two on the UK Singles Chart. That chart success belongs to Pavarotti’s version, not to Bocelli’s.

Bocelli’s road to opera ran through pop. Born on 22 September 1958 in Lajatico, in Tuscany, he had congenital glaucoma and lost his sight completely at the age of twelve after being hit in the eye by a football. He studied law at the University of Pisa and sang in piano bars in the evenings. In 1992 he recorded a demo of Zucchero’s song «Miserere»; according to English Wikipedia it was Pavarotti who, after hearing the tape, urged Zucchero to choose Bocelli, and on the tour that followed Bocelli also sang «Nessun dorma».

In February 1994 he won the newcomers’ section of the Sanremo festival with «Il mare calmo della sera», and in 1995 he returned with «Con te partirò», which finished fourth. «Viaggio italiano» followed his second album, «Bocelli», released the same year.

Bocelli has kept singing the aria on big occasions. On 7 May 2016 he performed it at the King Power Stadium, wearing a Leicester City shirt, before the club celebrated its Premier League title with its Italian manager, Claudio Ranieri. In February 2026 he sang it at San Siro, in Milan, during the opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, as the Olympic flame was carried into the stadium.

Words worth knowing: «dorma» is the present subjunctive of «dormire», used here as an order; «tramontare» is the verb for the sun or the stars going down; «dileguare» means to vanish or fade away; «sciogliere» means to melt, but also to untie or to break a spell; and «ahimè» is an old exclamation of sorrow, close to the English "alas".