Turandot

Dramma lirico in three acts (1926)

Music by Giacomo Puccini
Text by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni after Carlo Gozzi

Princess Turandot does not want to be anyone’s bride. And she is willing to do anything to protect her independence. Her strategy so far for ridding herself of burdensome suitors has been this: anyone who wants to marry her needs to solve three riddles. One wrong answer costs her prospective groom his life. Hundreds of men try their luck and fall victim to Turandot’s violent despotism. But then comes one man who can solve the riddles.

Giacomo Puccini’s last opera, Turandot, was never finished. Until his death, the composer never found a satisfying setting for the concluding love scene. Only after his friend, the Italian composer Franco Alfano, completed the finale we know today, basing it on Puccini’s sketches, did the opera have its world premiere in April 1926 at the Scala in Milan – and became a ground-breaking success. In Turandot, Puccini uses a previously unknown colour palette of East Asian melodies in the orchestral part and seeks to recreate the sounds of the ancient Chinese Empire. The director Philipp Stölzl, who in addition to operas and plays has directed feature films, television adverts and music videos, contributes a surreal visual language influenced by Dark Romanticism.

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