Its familiar tunes and its riveting tale of an icy fairy tale princess and a young lover willing to risk his life to win her love make this a must see production!

The American Premiere of this Christopher Alden production proves that the work can speak in a powerful, 21st century way, all while keeping a tight grip on the musical beauty that’s made it so popular for so many generations.


Sung in Italian with English translations projected above the stage.

Performances held at the Keller Auditorium.

Cast

Act I
In Peking, in legendary times.

The walls of the great Violet City: the Imperial City. The massive ramparts enclose almost the whole stage in a semi-circle.

At sunset, the square is filled with a crowd listening to an announcement from a mandarin. He reads a decree that Turandot, the pure princess, will wed the man who solves her three riddles. Anyone who stands the trial and fails will be executed. The Prince of Persia, her latest unsuccessful suitor, is to meet this fate at moonrise. The crowd calls for his death and demands the executioner, Pu-Tin-Pao.

As the guards thrust back the crowd, Timur, the exiled King of Tartary, falls to the ground, and Liù, his slave-girl attendant, calls for help. A young man runs up: it is Calaf, the Unknown Prince, Timur's son, who has been separated from his father for years. The usurper of their throne is pursuing them, and they can find no safety.

The chorus sings of the blade being sharpened on the whetstone in preparation for the execution. Timur tells Calaf how Liù has guided his flight. The crowd calls for more young lovers to come forward and accept Turandot's challenge: the riddles are three, but death is one.

As the moon rises, a chorus of boys greets it with a song. Pu-Tin-Pao confronts the Prince of Persia, and leads him off for execution. The crowd now calls on Turandot for mercy. She appears before them, and confirms the sentence of death. Calaf remains awestruck by the Princess, and Liù and Timur try to bring him back to his senses. He wishes to conquer her, and rushes towards the gong to strike the blow that will announce his challenge.

At this moment, Ping, Pang and Pong, Grand Chancellor, Grand Purveyor and Grand Cook, run forward and block his way. They warn the Unknown Prince that he is in danger of death and should return to his country. The Princess is not worth the sacrifice; she's nothing but flesh, when all's said and done. Turandot's handmaidens call down for silence, but the three Ministers are still determined to deter Calaf from his course. Ghosts of the dead suitors urge him on, and he invokes triumph and the power of love. The executioner holds aloft the Prince of Persia's head. Timur and Liù plead with him. He begs Liù not to cry. All three ask pity of each other, and the ministers make a final appeal, but the moonlight shines on the gong, and the crowd sings that they are already digging his grave. Calaf rushes to the gong and strikes it like a madman; the ministers laugh raucously, exclaiming that it is useless to protest.

Act II
Scene One
Ping, Pang and Pong discuss their preparations for what will be either a wedding or a funeral. They lament how China has changed under Turandot's tyranny; instead of the rule of law, everything has been reduced to this terrible contest. Thirteen have already died this year alone. Ping has a house in Honan, Pang a garden in Kiu, Pong has forests near Tsiang, and they long to return to them. They recollect some of the former suitors: princes of Samarkand, India and the Khirgiz, all killed. They pray that the Princess will find a husband and discover the mysteries of love. Trumpets sound, announcing the start of the ceremony.

Scene Two
Eight Sages enter with the sealed answers to Turandot's three riddles. The crowd greets the Sages, and points out Ping, Pang and Pong.  Emperor Altoum enters, and the crowd wishes him ten thousand years. The Unknown Prince begs three times to face the trial, and the Emperor calls on him to give up his hopeless quest; he is weary of bloodshed. The mandarin announces the rules of the contest as before, and a chorus of boys announces the approach of the Princess.

Turandot narrates how her remote ancestor, the Princess Lo-u-Ling, was ravished and abducted by a Tartar invader. It is to avenge her death that Turandot has set up her challenge. She warns Calaf of the rule: the riddles are three, but death is one. Calaf contradicts her: it is life that is one. Turandot reads the first riddle: a ghost rises in the night, invoked by all the world, vanishing with dawn but reborn in the heart. Calaf gives the answer: “hope.” The Sages open the first scroll: the answer is indeed hope. Turandot dismisses this as the hope that always disappoints, and reads the second riddle: what is it that darts like a flame and is not a flame, that grows cold with death yet blazes with dreams of conquest? Calaf hesitates, then gives the answer: “blood.” The crowd shouts their encouragement, and Turandot, enraged, delivers the third question: frost that inflames you, whiteness and darkness that enslaves you if it wants you free, but in taking you captive, makes you king! Turandot sneers at Calaf's hesitation, but then he cries the answer: “Turandot!”

The crowd rejoices at his victory, but Turandot appeals to her father to spare her the shame of marriage like a slave girl to a foreigner.  The Emperor declares that the oath is sacred. Turandot implores Calaf not to take her reluctant and shuddering into his arms. He tells her that he only wants her ardent with love, and sets her a riddle of his own: if she can guess his name before daybreak, he is prepared to die. The Emperor prays that the Unknown Prince will survive, and the crowd hails him.


Act III
Scene One
Night. Heralds are heard issuing the royal command: no one shall sleep in Peking. The stranger's name must be found on pain of death. Calaf repeats their cry and imagines Turandot in her cold room, looking at the stars as they tremble with love and hope. His secret is locked within him, and no one shall know his name until he speaks it with a kiss. When dawn breaks, he will win!

Ping, Pang and Pong sidle up to him with temptations: if it's love he wants, they can offer him maidens; if it's riches, then they have treasures; if it is glory, they'll arrange his escape to a victory anywhere but here. When he refuses, they threaten him with tortures, and fear that they, too, will be tortured to death if they fail. Just as they are about to attack him, the guards bring in Timur and Liù. Calaf denies that they know him. When Turandot appears, Ping announces his intention to torture the name out of them. First Timur is dragged forward, but Liù goes towards Turandot and tells her that the Prince's name is known only to her. She cries out under torture, but refuses to give up her secret. Turandot wants to know what has given her such strength to withstand torment, and she tells her that it is love. Turandot is moved for a moment, then orders her ministers to tear her secret from her. Ping and the crowd call for Pu-Tin-Pao, but when the executioner appears, Liù seizes his knife and stabs herself to death. She dies at Turandot's feet. Timur mourns for Liù. As they carry the body away, even Ping, Pang and Pong feel pity.

As Liù's funeral procession moves away, Calaf is left facing Turandot. He calls on her to lift her veil and look upon the blood that was shed for her. She refuses: her soul is on high. Calaf clasps her in his arms and kisses her.  Turandot admits that dawn has broken, and her sun is now setting. Calaf greets the dawn as the beginning of her glory, not the end. Turandot begins to reconcile her conflicting emotions, but still she begs him to leave with his secret. Calaf tells her that there is no mystery now: he is Calaf, the son of Timur. Turandot's spirit returns with this revelation: now he is in her power, and she can demand his trial before the people. Calaf declares that she has conquered.

Scene Two
The crowd greets the Emperor. Turandot advances towards him, and tells him that she knows the Unknown Prince's name: it is Love.  Calaf and Turandot embrace, while the crowd acclaims the glory of love.

Swan Song: Puccini’s Turandot

“I was born many years ago … far too many … and the Almighty touched me with his little finger and said, ‘Write for the theatre—mind, only for the theatre.’  Had he intended for me some other profession … well, I should, perhaps, not now find myself without the essential material.”

—Puccini to his librettist, Adami

With Turandot, Puccini’s musical voyage comes to fruition.  In his early 60s, he determined to do something wholly original and blaze new trails in his musical language.  Unfortunately, after Il Trittico, Puccini had some difficulty in finding a story for his next opera.  Several projects were started and abandoned, but none seemed to inspire the maestro until he had lunch with Renato Simoni and Giuseppe Adami.  Simoni mentioned Turandot.  Turandot had already been set to music by Ferruccio Busoni to a libretto he had written based upon an 18th-century play by Carlo Gozzi.  The play, a commedia dell’arte piece, was billed as a Chinese fable, incorporating all of the exotic elements that Orientalist perception of China had to offer.  The story offered Puccini the perfect opportunity to experiment with his current artistic goals, utilizing a wildly fantastic setting and a cast of very human, three-dimensional characters.

Puccini immediately pounced on the suggestion and by 1920, Adami and Simoni had reworked the original idea enough to satisfy Puccini’s exacting standards.  In 1921, Puccini was sketching in some music.  By 1922, he had finished orchestrating the first act and begun work on the second.  As he was scoring Act 2 in 1923, the maestro began to suffer from a painful sore throat and coughing fits, but he chose to ignore his illness and get on with his work.  Early in 1924, the second act was finished and he began to feverishly write the third act up until Liù’s death.  This scene, which Puccini had insisted upon in 1922, was presenting Adami and Simoni some dramatic problems.  Why Calaf would continue to pursue the cold Turandot after she had had Liù tortured to death defies credibility and lessens audience sympathy for the tenor.  The final duet between Calaf and Turandot was a constant sticking point, and none of Simoni’s solutions satisfied Puccini.

By this time, the pain in Puccini’s throat had become unbearable and after consulting his physician, he was diagnosed with throat cancer.  The final two scenes of the opera had yet to be written.  Puccini ultimately accepted Adami’s fourth version of the last duet and began to compose from his bed in a Belgian sanitarium.  On November 24, he underwent an operation and five days later died of heart failure.  The opera remained incomplete.  Only unintelligible sketches in Puccini’s hand existed for the finale.  Toscanini, who had been contracted to conduct the opening and had been working closely with Puccini during the last several months of his life, suggested that Franco Alfano complete the work.  Alfano finished Turandot six months later.  The opera premiered in 1926, 17 months after Puccini’s death.  At that performance, following Liù’s death and the chorus’s mournful, Oblia! Liù, poesia!, Toscanini put down his baton and said, “Here ends the opera, because at this point the Maestro died.”  Alfano’s ending was performed the following night and continues to conclude the opera to this day.

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

Son of composer Michele Puccini and the fifth musician in his line, Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy on December 22, 1858.   The Puccinis were a fixture in provincial Lucca, having served as organists and choirmasters in St. Martin’s Cathedral for 100 years.  The post was a hereditary one, and the eldest Puccini boy of each generation served the cathedral as a birthright. At 5 years old, Puccini lost his father.  His musical training fell to his uncle, Fortunato Magi, who did not find him the most apt pupil.  Puccini was often distracted; he skipped school and didn’t practice.  His uncle found he had “neither the ear … nor the calling of a musician.”  But he had an hereditary role to fill and began study with Carlo Angeloni under whom he made great progress.  Before reaching his majority, Puccini played organ for the churches of Lucca and taught music to the town’s children. By this time, the boy determined that he would make his way in music.  Before he was 18, Puccini entered a music competition with a hymn he had composed in honor of King Victor Emmanuel II.  It was returned to Puccini with comments from the committee chair urging him to study his musical technique. Far from crushed, young Puccini was still resolved to pursue music and, undaunted by distance and poverty, he walked the 25 miles to Pisa to attend a performance of Verdi’s new masterpiece, Aïda.  Aïda hit the aimless youth like a bolt of lightning.  He would compose operas!  Puccini renewed his musical studies with vigor.  He soon exhausted his opportunities in Lucca and turned his sights to the Milan Conservatory.  He received a study grant from Queen Margaret of Savoy and moved to Milan. Accepted to the conservatory, Puccini applied himself to his studies diligently enough to earn him the respect of his teachers:  Antonio Bazzini, director of the Conservatory, and Amilcare Ponchielli, composition teacher and successful opera composer in his own right.  These two invited young Puccini to their homes, introduced him to Milan’s musical and literary luminaries, and, most of all, encouraged and challenged him to write music.   In 1883, at 25, Puccini graduated from the Conservatory.  He had received critical praise for his final project and decided to enter a competition requiring a one-act opera.  Ponchielli put Puccini in touch with Ferdinando Fontana, who had a libretto ready to be set.   The composer liked the story, a fantastic tale of a faithless young man cursed by a coven of women who died abandoned by their lovers.  He set it to music and submitted the finished opera, Le Villi, to the committee.  Unfortunately, when the contest results were announced, no mention of Puccini’s piece was made.  All was not lost, however. Puccini’s one-act found a champion in Giulio Ricordi and premiered in 1884 with a favorable response. Ricordi had a keen awareness of talent—even talent as raw as the inexperienced Puccini’s—and he wanted to foster the career of this promising youth.  He bought the rights for Le Villi and commissioned another opera from the fledgling composer.  This was quite an opportunity since Ricordi owned one of the great publishing companies and was, in fact, Verdi’s own publisher.  Ricordi’s interest in Puccini flourished and bloomed into a life-long association between the publishing house and composer. Puccini started work on his new opera, Edgar, but distractions tore him from his work and slowed his composition.  He had met his future wife, Elvira Gemignani.  Unfortunately, she was still married to one of Puccini’s old classmates, and the lovers created a firestorm of controversy when Elvira chose to leave her husband and join Puccini in Milan. It took four years for Puccini to compose Edgar.  The libretto didn’t speak to Puccini’s peculiar genius for “little souls” in extraordinary situations.  The opera received tepid praise, but Ricordi saw improvement from Le Villi and pressed on with Puccini, commissioning another opera, the subject of which he left to the composer. Puccini decided upon Manon Lescaut, a risky topic, as it had already been set by Massenet with great success. Still, it touched Puccini, and he opened his version in 1893.  Audience reception was wildly enthusiastic.  Never again was Puccini to garner such accolades.  Manon Lescaut gave him international notoriety and Ricordi’s faith was well-rewarded. Next came La Bohème, based upon Mürger’s novel, Scènes de la vie de bohème.  Puccini was confident and sure of his dramatic sensibility, causing him to be maddeningly specific with his librettists, Illica and Giacosa.  His specificity paid off.  Bohème was a public triumph.  Critics may have pooh-poohed it, but the public acclaim quickly swept it from theater to theater, country to country and continent to continent.  It remains today, unequivocally, a masterpiece of the operatic stage. Puccini was on top.  He ventured into verismo with Tosca, a vivid, disturbing, slightly sadistic opera.  The public was enthralled.  Seven curtain calls rocked the theater.  Indeed, Tosca was an unqualified success despite the critics’ harping on the lurid subject matter. After Tosca came the much-anticipated Madama Butterfly.  Every indication pointed to another victory for the composer, but the premiere garnered laughter during Puccini’s carefully constructed scenes, boos and jeers so raucous as to beg credulity.  Many feel that Puccini’s rivals orchestrated the debacle.  Humbled, Puccini re-worked his Butterfly, the opera he felt to be his masterpiece.  Its second opening fared better than the first.  Audiences roared their approval, giving Puccini twelve curtain calls.  Butterfly was vindicated. While his professional life was a triumph, Puccini’s personal life kept descending into painful chaos.  His wife, Elvira, continued to have violently jealous outbursts and she accused a maid in their home of seducing her husband.  While Puccini had had myriad infidelities, their maid, Doria Manfredi, was not one of them.  Elvira was adamant, however, and her outspoken accusations and denunciations led to the suicide of the persecuted Doria.  Doria’s family sued Elvira and she was fined and sentenced to prison time.  Puccini managed to avoid this humiliation by settling with the family.  He did so, however, at great personal cost; he fell into a deep despair and his emotional state was such that he could no longer write. To flee his depression and his harpy wife, Puccini sailed for New York.  Here he saw The Girl of the Golden West, a play by David Belasco, whose earlier work had inspired Madama Butterfly.  Excited by the theatrical possibilities of the Wild West, Puccini approached Ricordi and got an agreement.  The result, La fanciulla del West, was another phenomenal success.  Following this, Puccini wrote La Rondine, which was also praised, but Puccini felt at odds with himself and the piece.  He felt old.  His friend and mentor, Ricordi, had died, and he had a less cordial relationship with Ricordi’s son.  La Rondine felt as if he were repeating himself; World War I had engulfed the planet, and Puccini needed to change. He devoured other composer’s scores and kept abreast of the new musical language of the 20th century.  He produced Il Trittico, a series of three one-act operas.  The public accepted and liked it, but the critics were unnerved by the maestro’s new vocabulary and remained cool.  The press felt Puccini couldn’t, at 61, write better than Bohème and Butterfly.  Puccini knew better and restlessly cast about for a plot which would allow him to explore his brave new ideas more fully.  He had absorbed Stravinsky, Webern, Berg, Schoenberg, and Debussy.  Finally Turandot presented itself to him and he feverishly began work on what was to become his swan song. By now, though, Puccini was ill, complaining of throat pain and constant coughing.  Eventually, he was diagnosed with throat cancer.  He was very sick and feverishly working on Turandot’s final duet when he passed away in November 1924 after a debilitating treatment regimen.  The world mourned his passing.  La Scala cancelled performances, and a funeral procession in his honor was attended by thousands. Puccini’s legacy is the interweaving of music with drama so seamlessly that even as his most elegantly crafted music is played, the drama of the moment supercedes all else.  He is a sublime communicator, reaching audiences across the years and continuing to arrest our hearts with a dramatic perfection wholly accessible and eternal.

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