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Avevo regolato il flash prima della festa.

Avevo regolato il flash prima della festa.
I had adjusted the flash before the party.
From Lesson 161:The pluperfect tense (avevo fatto)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Avevo regolato il flash prima della festa.

Why use avevo regolato instead of ho regolato?
Avevo regolato is the trapassato prossimo (pluperfect) tense, meaning "I had adjusted." You use this tense to talk about a past action that happened before another past action or timeframe. Here, the adjusting happened before the party. Ho regolato (passato prossimo) would just mean "I adjusted" or "I have adjusted."
How exactly is avevo regolato built?
It is formed by combining the imperfect tense of the helper verb (either avere or essere) with the past participle of your main verb. Since regolare (to adjust) takes avere, we use avevo (I had) + regolato (adjusted).
Why does the sentence say prima della festa and not just prima la festa?
In Italian, the phrase to say "before [a noun]" is prima di. Because festa (party) takes the feminine singular article la, you must combine di + la to make the articulated preposition della.
Flash is an English word! How do Italian grammar rules apply to it?
When Italian borrows a foreign word that ends in a consonant, it is almost always treated as masculine, which is why it takes the article il. Foreign loanwords also do not change their endings in the plural, so "the flashes" would simply be i flash.

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