The Beeb’s Radio Three announcers’ continued mispronunciations of the Italian language never ceases to amuse me.
One example this morning had me in hysterics. It was when that famous aria from Gluck’s ‘Orfeo ed Euridice’ ‘Che farò senza Euridice’ was announced. Accents and emphases in Italian with its wide, sonorous vowel sounds are essential and can produce unlikely results if declaimed incorrectly. In this case the accent on the second vowel of ‘farò’ was not emphasised so the sentence changed from ‘What will I do without Euridice ‘ to ‘What a lighthouse without Euridice!’, ‘faro’ without the accent meaning ‘lighthouse’ in Italian.
My thoughts immediately changed from poor Orfeo wandering in the underworld in search of his beloved to an Eddystone-style lighthouse abandoned from the saving grace of a lighthouse keeper’s daughter. For Euridice had now become for me the heroine Grace Darling who rescued the survivors from the shipwrecked Forfarshire in 1838 and brought her national fame, a fame which, sadly, she did not enjoy for long dying aged just twenty six
I look forward to a production of Gluck’s immortal opera about unrequited love with Euridice playing the role of the lighthouse keeper’s daughter and with Orfeo as the hapless sailor about to have his ship splintered upon storm raging rocks.
From London to La Costa (and Lucca and Beyond) Part Three 
From Georgia Mann BBC Radio Three announcer:
To be honest that sounds like an improvement on the original Francis.
I have been saying, and singing, that aria with that pronunciation since I was 18 and you are the first person to take issue with it, so I’m not going to panic too much – but rather embrace the lighthouse connections I have found.
Very Best Wishes,
Georgia
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