Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot by Carlo Gozzi. Turandot was unfinished at the time of Puccini's death and was later completed by Franco Alfano. The first performance was held at the Teatro alla Scala
in Milan
on 25 April 1926 and conducted by Arturo Toscanini. This performance included only Puccini's music and not Alfano's additions. The first performance of the opera as completed by Alfano was conducted by Ettore Panizza.
Origin of the name
Turandot is a
Persian word and name
meaning "the daughter of
Turan", Turan being a
region of
Central Asia which used to be
part of the
Persian Empire. In
Persian, the fairy tale is known as
Turandokht, with
"dokht" being a contraction for
dokhtar (meaning
daughter), and both the "kh" and "t" are clearly
pronounced. However, according to Puccini scholar Patrick Vincent
Casali, the final "t" should not be sounded in the pronunciation of
the opera's name or when referring to the title character, as
Puccini never pronounced it (according to
Rosa Raisa, the first singer to play the title
role) and, as Casali notes, the musical setting of many of Calaf's
intonations of the name makes sounding the final "t" all but
impossible. However Simonetta Puccini, Puccini's granddaughter and
keeper of the Villa Puccini and Mausoleum, clearly states that the
final "t" must be pronounced.
History
The story of Turandot was taken from the Persian collection of
stories called
The Book of One Thousand
and One Days or
Hezar
o-yek shab (1722 French translation
Les Mille et un jours by
François Petis de la Croix —
not to be confused with its sister work
The Book of One Thousand
and One Nights), where the character of "Turandokht" as a
cold Chinese princess was found. The story of Turandokht is one of
the best known from de la Croix's translation.The plot respects the
classical unities of time, space
and action.
Puccini first began working on
Turandot in March 1920 after meeting with librettists
Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. He began composition in January
1921. By March 1924 he had completed the opera up to the final
duet. However, he was unsatisfied with the text of the final duet,
and did not continue until October 8, when he chose Adami's fourth
version of the duet text.
On October 10 he was diagnosed with throat
cancer and on November 24 went to Brussels
, Belgium for
treatment. There he underwent a new and experimental
radiation therapy treatment. Puccini and his wife never knew how
serious the cancer was, as the news was only revealed to his son.
He died of complications on November 29, 1924.
He left behind 36 pages of sketches on 23 sheets for the end of
Turandot, together with instructions that
Riccardo Zandonai should finish the opera.
Puccini's son Tonio objected, and eventually
Franco Alfano was chosen to flesh out the
sketches after
Vincenzo Tommasini
(who had completed
Boito's
Nerone after the composer’s death) and
Pietro Mascagni were rejected. Ricordi
decided on Alfano because his opera
La leggenda di
Sakùntala resembled
Turandot in its setting and heavy
orchestration. Alfano provided a first version of the ending with a
few passages of his own, and even a few sentences added to the
libretto which was not considered complete even by Puccini himself.
After the severe criticisms by editor
Ricordi and the conductor Arturo Toscanini, he was
forced to write a second, strictly censored version that followed
Puccini's sketches more closely, to the point where he did not set
some of Adami's text to music because Puccini had not indicated how
he wanted it to sound. Ricordi's real concern was not the quality
of Alfano's work, but that he wanted the end of
Turandot
to sound as if it had been written by Puccini, and Alfano's editing
had to be seamless. Of this version, about three minutes were cut
for performance by Toscanini and it is this shortened version that
is usually performed.
The
premiere of Turandot was at La Scala, Milan, on Sunday
April 25, 1926, one year and five months after Puccini's
death. It was conducted by
Arturo Toscanini. In the middle of Act III,
two measures after the words "
Liù, poesia!", the orchestra
rested. Toscanini stopped and laid down his baton. He turned to the
audience and announced: "
Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo
punto il maestro è morto" ("Here the opera ends, because at
this point the maestro died"). The curtain was lowered slowly.
Toscanini apparently never conducted the opera again. The second
and subsequent performances at the 1926 La Scala season were
conducted by
Ettore Panizza and they
included Alfano's ending. (As discussed in Ashbrook and Powers ,
the music for Liù's death was not in fact Puccini's final
composition, but had been orchestrated some nine months
earlier).
Turandot quickly spread to other
venues: Rome
(Teatro
Costanzi, April 29, four days after the Milan premiere), Buenos Aires
(Teatro Colón, June 23), Dresden
(September
6, in German), Venice
(La Fenice,
September 9), Vienna
(October
14), Berlin
(November
8), New
York
(Metropolitan Opera, November 16), Brussels (La Monnaie,
17 December, in French), Naples
(Teatro San
Carlo, January 17, 1927), Parma
(February
12), Turin
(March 17),
London
(Covent Garden, June 7), San Francisco
(September 19), Bologna
(October
1927), Paris
(March 29,
1928), Moscow
(Bolshoi
Theatre, 1931).
Turandot is a staple of the standard operatic repertoire
and it appears as number twelve on
Opera
America's list of the 20 most-performed operas in North
America.
For many
years, the Government of the People's Republic of China
forbade performance of Turandot because
they said it portrayed China and the Chinese unfavourably.
In the
late 1990s they relented, and in September 1998 the opera was
performed for eight nights at the Forbidden City
, complete with opulent sets and soldiers from the
People's Liberation Army as
extras. It was an international collaboration, with director
Zhang Yimou as
choreographer and
Zubin
Mehta as conductor. The singing roles saw
Giovanna Casolla as Princess Turandot,
Sergej Larin as Calàf, and
Barbara Frittoli as Liù.
As with
Madama Butterfly,
Puccini strove for a semblance of Asian authenticity (at least to
western ears) by using music from the region in question. Up to
eight of the themes used in
Turandot appear to be based on
traditional Chinese music, and the melody of a Chinese song named
"
Mò Li Hūa ", or "Jasmine", is included as
a motif for the princess.
Alfano's original ending
The debate over which version of the ending is better is still
open, but the consensus generally tends towards Alfano's first
score. Scrutiny of the sketches, which Ricordi later allowed
scholars to analyze (and sometimes publish), showed how Alfano
actually didn't even try to use most of the short sketches on the
sheets, with the exception of those with an obvious placement and
one short theme he freely transformed, and used for the sake of
stylistic continuity. From 1976 to 1988 the American composer Janet
Maguire, convinced that the whole ending is coded in the sketches
left by Puccini, composed a new ending, but this has never been
performed. In 2001
Luciano Berio made
a new sanctioned completion, using Puccini's sketches but also
expanding the musical language, but this has received a mixed
reception.
The opera with Alfano's original ending has been recorded more than
once. The first definitely known live performance of the opera with
Alfano's original ending was not until November 3, 1982, at the
Barbican, London. It may have been staged in Germany in the early
years, since Ricordi had commissioned a German translation of the
text and a number of scores were printed in Germany with the full
final scene included. This includes the aria "Del primo pianto",
which is not usually performed. Recordings of this aria with Anna
Roselle and Lotte Lehmann exist, which suggests they may have sung
the original ending on stage, but no other evidence is
available.
Roles
Original 1926 Turandot poster
| Role |
Voice type |
Premiere Cast, 25 April 1926
(Conductor: Arturo
Toscanini)
|
| Princess Turandot |
soprano |
Rosa Raisa |
| The Emperor Altoum, her father |
tenor |
Francesco Dominici |
| Timur, the deposed King of Tartary |
bass |
Carlo Walter |
| The Unknown Prince (Calàf), his son |
tenor |
Miguel Fleta |
| Liù, a slave girl |
soprano |
Maria Zamboni |
| Ping, Lord Chancellor |
baritone |
Giacomo Rimini |
| Pang, Majordomo |
tenor |
Emilio Venturini |
| Pong, Head chef of the Imperial Kitchen |
tenor |
Giuseppe Nessi |
| A Mandarin |
baritone |
Aristide Baracchi |
| The Prince of Persia |
tenor |
Not named in the original program |
| The Executioner (Pu-Tin-Pao) |
silent |
Not named in the original program |
| Imperial guards, the executioner's men, boys,
priests, mandarins, dignitaries, eight wise men,Turandot's
handmaids, soldiers, standard-bearers, musicians, ghosts of
suitors, crowd |
Synopsis
- Place: Peking, China
- Time: Legendary times
Act 1
In front of the imperial palace
A Mandarin announces the law of the land (
Popolo di
Pekino! - "Any man who desires to wed Turandot must first
answer her three riddles. If he fails, he will be beheaded"). The
Prince of Persia has failed and is to be beheaded at moonrise. As
the crowd surges towards the gates of the palace, the imperial
guards brutally repulse them, a blind old man is pushed to the
ground. His slave-girl, Liù, cries for help. A young man hears her
cry and recognizes the old man as his long-lost father, Timur, the
deposed king of Tartary. The young Prince of Tartary is overjoyed
at seeing his father alive but urges him not to speak his name
because he fears the Chinese rulers who have conquered Tartary.
Timur tells his son that, of all his servants, only Liù has
remained faithful to him. When the Prince asks her why, she tells
him that once, long ago in the palace, he smiled upon her (The
crowd, Liù, Prince of Tartary, Timur:
Indietro,
cani!).
The moon rises, and the crowd's cries for blood turn into silence.
The doomed Prince of Persia is led before the crowd on his way to
execution. The young Prince is so handsome that the crowd and the
Prince of Tartary are moved to compassion and call on Turandot to
spare his life (The crowd, Prince of Tartary:
O
giovinetto!). She appears, and with a single imperious gesture
orders the execution to continue. The Prince of Tartary, who has
never seen Turandot before, falls immediately in love. He cries out
Turandot's name (three times) with joy, and the Prince of Persia
echoes his final cry. The crowd screams in horror as the Prince of
Persia is beheaded.
The Prince of Tartary is dazzled by Turandot's beauty. He is about
to rush towards the gong and strike it three times— the symbolic
gesture of whoever wishes to marry Turandot—when the ministers
Ping, Pong, and Pang appear and urge him cynically (
Fermo, che
fai?) not to lose his head for Turandot but to go back to his
own country. Timur urges his son to desist, and Liù, who is
secretly in love with the Prince, pleads with him (
Signore, ascolta! - "My lord,
listen!") not to attempt the riddles. Liù's words touch his heart.
The Prince tells Liù to make exile more bearable and never to
abandon his father if the Prince fails to answer the riddles
(
Non piangere, Liù -
"Don't cry, Liù"). The three ministers, Timur, and Liù try one last
time to hold the Prince (
Ah! Per l'ultima volta!
) but he refuses to listen.
He calls Turandot's name three times, and each time Liù, Timur, and
the ministers reply, "Death!", and the crowd gasps. Rushing to the
gong that hangs in front of the palace, he strikes it three times,
declaring himself a suitor. From the palace balcony, Turandot
accepts the challenge, as Ping, Pang and Pong laugh at the prince's
foolishness.
Act 2
Scene 1: A pavilion in the imperial palace. Before
sunrise
Ping, Pang, and Pong lament their place as ministers, poring over
palace documents and presiding over endless rituals. They prepare
themselves for either a wedding or a funeral (Ping, Pang, Pong:
Ola, Pang!).
Ping suddenly longs for his country house in
Honan
, with its small lake surrounded by bamboo.
Pong remembers his grove of forests near Tsiang, and Pang recalls
his gardens near Kiu. The three share fond memories of life away
from the palace (Ping, Pang, Pong:
Ho una casa nell'Honan)
but are shaken back to the realities of Turandot's bloody reign.
They continually accompany young men to death and recall their
ghastly fate. As the palace trumpet sounds, the ministers ready
themselves for another spectacle as they await the entrance of the
Emperor.
Scene 2: The courtyard of the palace.
Sunrise
The Emperor Altoum, father of Turandot, sits on his grand throne in
his palace. He urges the Prince to withdraw his challenge but the
Prince refuses (Altoum, the Prince:
Un giuramento atroce).
Turandot enters and explains (
In
questa reggia) that her ancestress of millennia past,
Princess Lo-u-Ling, reigned over her kingdom "in silence and joy,
resisting the harsh domination of men" until she was ravished and
murdered by an invading foreign prince. Lo-u-Ling now lives again
in Turandot and out of revenge she has sworn never to let any man
possess her. She warns the Prince to withdraw, but again he
refuses. The Princess presents her first riddle:
Straniero,
ascolta! - ".....What is born each night and dies each dawn?"
The Prince correctly replies, "Hope."The Princess, unnerved,
presents her second riddle (
Guizza al pari di fiamma -
"What flickers red and warm like a flame, but is not fire?") The
Prince thinks for a moment before replying,
Sangue -
"Blood". Turandot is shaken. The crowd cheers the Prince, provoking
Turandot's anger. She presents her third riddle (
Gelo che ti da
foco- "What is like ice, but burns like fire?"). As the prince
thinks, Turandot taunts him. Suddenly he cries out victory and
announces, "Turandot!"
The crowd cheers for the triumphant Prince. Turandot throws herself
at her father's feet and pleads with him not to leave her to the
Prince's mercy. The Emperor insists that an oath is sacred, and it
is Turandot's duty to wed the Prince (Turandot, Altoum, the Prince:
Figlio del cielo). As she cries out in anger, the Prince
stops her, saying that he has a proposal for her:
Tre enigmi
m'hai proposto - "You do not know my name. Bring me my name
before sunrise, and at sunrise, I will die" Turandot accepts. The
Emperor declares that he hopes to call the Prince his son come
sunrise.
Act 3
Scene 1: The palace gardens. Night
In the distance, heralds call out Turandot's command:
Cosi
comanda Turandot - "This night, none shall sleep in Peking!
The penalty for all will be death if the Prince's name is not
discovered by morning". The Prince waits for dawn and anticipates
his victory:
Nessun dorma -
"Nobody shall sleep!... Nobody shall sleep! Even you, O
Princess"
Ping, Pong, and Pang appear and offer the Prince women and riches
if he will only give up Turandot (
Tu che guardi le
stelle), but he refuses. A group of soldiers then drag in
Timur and Liù. They have been seen speaking to the Prince, so they
must know his name. Turandot enters and orders Timur and Liù to
speak. The Prince feigns ignorance, saying they know nothing. Liù
declares that she alone knows the Prince's name, but she will not
reveal it. Ping demands the Prince's name, and when she refuses,
she is tortured. Turandot is clearly taken by Liù's resolve and
asks her who put so much strength in her heart. Liù answers
"Princess, Love!". Turandot demands that Ping tear the Prince's
name from Liù, and he orders her to be tortured further. Liù
counters Turandot (
Tu che di
gel sei cinta - "You who are begirdled by ice"), saying
that she too shall learn love. Having spoken, Liù seizes a dagger
from a soldier's belt and stabs herself. As she staggers towards
the Prince and falls dead, the crowd screams for her to speak the
Prince's name. Since Timur is blind, he must be told about Liù's
death, and he cries out in anguish. Timur warns that the gods will
be offended by this outrage, and the crowd is subdued with shame
and fear. The grieving Timur and the crowd follow Liù's body as it
is carried away. Everybody departs leaving the Prince and Turandot.
He reproaches Turandot for her cruelty (The Prince, Turandot:
Principessa di morte - "Princess of death") and then takes
her in his arms and kisses her in spite of her resistance. Here
Puccini's work ends. The remainder of the music was completed by
Franco Alfano.
The Prince tries to convince Turandot to love him. At first she is
disgusted, but after he kisses her, she feels herself turning
towards passion. She asks him to ask for nothing more and to leave,
taking his mystery with him. The Prince however, reveals his name,
"Calàf, son of Timur" and places his life in Turandot's hands. She
can now destroy him if she wants (Turandot, Calàf:
Del primo
pianto).
Scene 2: The courtyard of the palace. Dawn
Turandot and Calàf approach the Emperor's throne. She declares that
she knows the Prince's name:
Diecimila anni al nostro
Imperatore! - "It is ... love!" The crowd cheers and acclaims
the two lovers (
O sole! Vita!
Eternita).
Critical response
Whilst long recognised as the most tonally adventurous of his
operas, Turandot has also been considered as at best a flawed
masterpiece, and some critics have been unreservedly hostile. Thus
Joseph Kerman states:
- "Nobody would deny that dramatic potential can be found in this
tale. Puccini, however, did not find it; his music does nothing to
rationalize the legend or illuminate the characters..." and he
apparently considered the opera as a whole "depraved".
Some of this criticism is possibly due to the standard Alfano
ending (Alfano II), in which Liù's death is followed almost
immediately by Calaf's 'rough wooing' of Turandot, and the
'bombastic' end to the opera. The Berio version is considered to
overcome some of these criticisms, but critics such as Tanner have
failed to be wholly convinced by the new ending, noting that the
criticism by the Puccini advocate
Julian
Budden still applies:
- "Nothing in the text of the final duet suggests that Calaf's
love for Turandot amounts to anything more than a physical
obsession: nor can the ingenuities of Simoni and Adami's text for
'Del primo pianto' convince us that the Princess's submission is
any less hormonal."
Ashbrook and Powers consider it was an appreciation of this
problem, which they state as an inadequate buildup for Turandot's
change of heart combined with an overly successful treatment of the
secondary character' (by which they mean Liù), which contributed to
Puccini's inability to complete the opera.
Instrumentation
Turandot is scored for the following large
orchestra:
- percussion: timpani, cymbals, gong, triangle,
snare drum, bass
drum, tam-tam, glockenspiel, xylophone, bass
xylophone, tubular bells, tuned
Chinese gongs, onstage wood block,
onstage large gong
Recordings
- See Turandot
discography.
References
- List of Friedrich Schiller's works
- For a discussion about the pronunciation of the name,
cf.
- based on a story by the Persian poet
Nizemi
- Turandot, Princess of China
- These are the words reported by Eugenio Gara, who was present at the
prima, in * E. Gara is in turn cited in * The quotation however
appears to be based on memory, and differs in different sources.
According to a 1974 interview with another eyewitness, Toscanini's
words were: "Qui termina la rappresentazione perché a questo
punto il maestro è morto" ("Here the performance finishes
because at this point the maestro died") and the English
translation of this interview seems to say "Here the Maestro
finished". The Wikipedia article on the life of Puccini notes that:
Some record that he said, more poetically, "Here the Maestro laid
down his pen".
- Turandot: Concert Opera Boston
- " "Top 20 list of most-performed operas".
Opera
America. Retrieved on September 28, 2008.
- Banned in China
- Banned in China because officials believed it portrays the
country negatively
- See above, "Ashbrook and Powers, Chapter 4"
- Ashbrook, W. and Powers, H. "Puccini's Turandot: The End of the
Great Tradition". Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN
0-691-02712-9
- Note that the grave accent (`) in the name Liù is
not a pinyin tone mark
indicating a falling tone, but an Italian diacritic that marks
stress, indicating that the word is
pronounced rather than . If we take it to be an authentic Mandarin
name, it likely to be one of the several characters pronounced
Liu that are used as surnames: 刘 Liù or 柳 Liǔ .
- A later attempt at completing the opera was made,
with the co-operation of the publishers, Ricordi, in 2002 by
Luciano
Berio
- Jonathan Christian Petty and Marshall Tuttle,
"Tonal Psychology in Puccini's Turandot ", Center for
Korean Studies, University of California, Berkeley and Langston
University, 2001
- Joseph Kerman, Opera As Drama, New York: Knopf, 1956
(revised edition, pp. 205/206. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988, ISBN 0520062744)
- Tanner, Michael. " Hollow swan-song". The Spectator,
March 22, 2003.
- Blades, James, Percussion instruments and their
history, Bold Strummer, 1992, p. 344. ISBN 0933224613
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