# Turandot



## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

Our local opera company is doing Turandot. I have a real problem with the story line. Why would anyone want to marry a bloodthirsty tyrant like Turandot? It's a bit like Caligula having a beauty contest where all the losers are executed.


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## sabrina (Apr 26, 2011)

The plot is debatable, but it's just like an exotic fairy story with a happy end. The music is divine. What a pity Puccini could not finish it, similar to Mozart requiem.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

drpraetorus said:


> Our local opera company is doing Turandot. I have a real problem with the story line. Why would anyone want to marry a bloodthirsty tyrant like Turandot? It's a bit like Caligula having a beauty contest where all the losers are executed.


LUST FOR POWER AND WEALTH, (doh!) I agree, making of it as if it were a romance is pretty silly, but hey, that is a commercial sentimentalism about which Puccini and his chosen librettists were more than canny


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

It was a bloodthirsty age when the tale was invented. Pretty girl, virgin, supreme challenge, and great wealth.... which many men could not resist of that age.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

sabrina said:


> The plot is debatable, but it's just like an exotic fairy story with a happy end. The music is divine. What a pity Puccini could not finish it, similar to Mozart requiem.


It was really quite complete until the last few pages of the love duet finale, not much in comparison to the 'what about' questions around the Mozart Requiem.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> It was a bloodthirsty age when the tale was invented. Pretty girl, virgin, supreme challenge, and great wealth.... which many men could not resist of that age.


sounds similar to 'Game of Thrones' - Oh, that was 'invented' a couple of years ago - seems like few things change


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

drpraetorus said:


> Why would anyone want to marry a bloodthirsty tyrant like Turandot? It's a bit like Caligula having a beauty contest where all the losers are executed.


remember all those women who marry "celebrity" murderers still in jail? And I think Caligula would've got quite a few contenders. People are odd like that.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

It all evens out in that opera. Kalaf, the 'hero', is not precisely the most admirable human being imaginable. The only good person in the opera is Liu and she dies because of it. The libretto (based on a Goldoni play iirc) is trying to tell us something about human nature that we simply would prefer not to hear.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

With Nilsson and Corelli singing it, who the **** cares really about the plot anyway;-) You go for the singing and the long red dress and the Puccini/ oriental hybrid score;-)


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## perempe (Feb 27, 2014)

Turandot was one of the best in our season, i watched it twice! i really liked the music, there was only one scene i did not like, the questions and the answers. i really liked the scenes with choir (as i sang in a choir in elementary school). i did not like the finale because of the conductor. (it was boring compared to the CDs.)

and you hate to hear Nessun Dorma live.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

perempe said:


> Turandot was one of the best in our season, i watched it twice! i really liked the music, there was only one scene i did not like, the questions and the answers. i really liked the scenes with choir (as i sang in a choir in elementary school). *i did not like the finale because of the conductor.* (it was boring compared to the CDs.)
> 
> and you hate to hear Nessun Dorma live.


You need a really gifted conductor to make Alfano's music sound good in juxtaposition with the last of Puccini.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

So many opera plots make little sense. One must simply relax and enjoy the (hopefully) great music and terrific singing.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

It seems that with _Turandot_ Puccini was entering Wagner's realm in dramatizing myth. So it can be revelatory if you think of the characters as archetypal figures. Turandot is the destructive female who lures males to their deaths, like Homer's Sirens. The young prince is the maturing male, who must accept the challenge of defeating her destructive potential to make the journey out of boyhood and into manhood.


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

drpraetorus said:


> Our local opera company is doing Turandot. I have a real problem with the story line. Why would anyone want to marry a bloodthirsty tyrant like Turandot? It's a bit like Caligula having a beauty contest where all the losers are executed.


The plot is a sticking point for a lot of people. I wonder why that isn't the case in the Ring, where there is also murder, corruption, all kinds of savage and cold-hearted betrayals, and, to top it all off with a cherry, the story actually seems to be not just condoning but commending incest. So why does the Ring get the label of "Great Work" and _Turandot_ gets the shaft? Well, scholars have thought about the Ring a lot, and have decided that it is really about human freedom, and that all that stuff is really the consequence of deeper struggles that take place because of the passage of power from the gods to mankind. If you look at _Turandot_ with similar "don't take it literally" glasses, you can see an entirely different story than the one that plays out on stage.

Puccini was very clear about the fact that Calaf and Turandot were being outside of this world, archetypal. This is a huge departure from any of his previous operas, with the possible exception of Minnie in _La fanciulla del west_, who is, perhaps, a kind of angel. But if anything, she grows into one: she undergoes a process of development from a girl "ignorant and good for nothing" into a powerful woman who saves an entire community from the spiritual ruin of revenge. So Calaf and Turandot are taking the opposite journey: they are beings "apart from the world" in Puccini's phrase, who are brought down to Earth by the selfless sacrifice of Liu.

It's very important to remember that Liu's name is very close to that of Lou-Ling, the princess who was murdered by the Tartar Prince in Turandot's story in _In questa reggia_. So in torturing and causing Liu's death, Turandot has caused the crime which she is avenging to be recapitulated: she has, in effect, murdered the same innocent girl all over again. So Calaf must redeemed of the sins of his ancestry, and of his own obsessive, blind love, and Turandot must be redeemed for her sins of violence, and her obsessive, blind, rejection of love. This is where Puccini's ending is sorely missed. He was the only man in the world who could have made the ending believable and real, and I think it would have been very profound. Calaf kisses Turandot (a moment which, in Puccini's sketches, has the tenderness of 'Vogliatemi bene' or 'Amor, amor!' at the end of Act I of _La boheme_, but in Alfano's ending is like he's beating her into submission), which causes her to cry. It is clear that she is crying both because she believes "My glory has ended", but also because she is feeling genuine remorse. We get no indication of this from Alfano. This view is reinforced by the statement of Calaf's, "Your glory began with your first tears." Finally, we have the ending, at which point Calaf holds all the cards: he has the Princess's willingness, he is still unknown, and he can take her to the Emperor to seal his victory. But he doesn't. He submits _to_ her. He already stated in Act II that he was uninterested in taking her by force, and he makes good on that. He tells her his name, giving her the power to destroy him. But she doesn't, because he has freed her from the self-destructive prison of her pride. In his submission, an act of pure love, he redeems the ancient evil done to Lou-Ling, and again to Liu. At this moment of spiritual and psychological transformation, Alfano's sing-along ending is an abomination. (Ricordi and Toscanini deserve some of the blame too.)

This is how I make sense of the story, and the plethora of mythological and psychological symbols deployed throughout the opera (night and day, the moon, the "Unkown Prince" (think Lohengrin), etc. convinces me that that is the right way to go about it. The night is the time of myth and introspection, but also of the kind of dangerous love of Tristan and Isolde. People know to treat Wagner's work in terms of symbols, but they never seem to think of doing it with Puccini. Puccini was melancholic, romantic, and introverted all his life, and so in a sense he was living in a world with more night than most, but I think the joyous Interlude for the Dawn that he was planning to write shows that he was, at 65, still developing personally, and the music shows that he was still developing as an artist. _Turandot_ really is a masterpiece, and even if you don't buy my theory of events, I don't think that you should allow such a silly thing as the plot to get in the way of experiencing this great operist's greatest work.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

I'm gonna do something kind-of-cheap: quote myself:


Chi_townPhilly said:


> As an illustration of another example of the 'problematic character' subset, let's touch upon Calaf from Puccini's Turandot. On the surface, his goal to win Turandot overwhelms everything that results from his quest. The city-dwellers sing of a possible mass-slaying in the morning- Calaf exults "let the morning come!" Liu absorbs torture on his behalf... he's okay with letting the torture continue, even to the point of Liu's impromptu Chinese equivalent of hari-kiri to make the torture stop. Just one more bump in the road for our Calaf. This is all reprehensible on a literal level- but it's understood that the major characters of Turandot have their truer functions on the symbolic level. It's the best way of undertanding what's involved.


Pulled from an earlier commentary of mine re: the Ring Cycle- but thought that this passage was relevant here.


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

hpowders said:


> So many opera plots make little sense. One must simply relax and enjoy the (hopefully) great music and terrific singing.


That's generally my view


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Sonata said:


> That's generally my view


I mean when do you simply suspend belief and put up with watching a 250 pound Gilda in Rigoletto? 
You do it when she brings you to tears singing an unbelievable Caro nome.

In Turandot you did the same when the singer was Birgit Nilsson

And people who can't do that simply don't get opera; it's all about the singing!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

HumphreyAppleby said:


> The plot is a sticking point for a lot of people. I wonder why that isn't the case in the Ring, where there is also murder, corruption, all kinds of savage and cold-hearted betrayals, and, to top it all off with a cherry, the story actually seems to be not just condoning but commending incest. So why does the Ring get the label of "Great Work" and _Turandot_ gets the shaft? Well, scholars have thought about the Ring a lot, and have decided that it is really about human freedom, and that all that stuff is really the consequence of deeper struggles that take place because of the passage of power from the gods to mankind. If you look at _Turandot_ with similar "don't take it literally" glasses, you can see an entirely different story than the one that plays out on stage.
> 
> Puccini was very clear about the fact that Calaf and Turandot were being outside of this world, archetypal. This is a huge departure from any of his previous operas, with the possible exception of Minnie in _La fanciulla del west_, who is, perhaps, a kind of angel. But if anything, she grows into one: she undergoes a process of development from a girl "ignorant and good for nothing" into a powerful woman who saves an entire community from the spiritual ruin of revenge. So Calaf and Turandot are taking the opposite journey: they are beings "apart from the world" in Puccini's phrase, who are brought down to Earth by the selfless sacrifice of Liu.
> 
> ...


Wonderful essay, HumphreyAppleby. The plot of Turandot has always troubled me, and up to now I have simply had to throw up my hands, sit back, and enjoy some of Puccini's most exciting music (as someone else here said, with Nilsson and Corelli singing, who cares what it all means?). But your words prompt me to take another look. I still suspect that the jolt of Calaf and Turandot getting it on over the corpse of poor little Liu will remain uncomfortable; Puccini, with his infallible theatrical instincts, must have recognized the difficulty and felt that making this juxtaposition palatable required a creative effort beyond anything he had attempted before. I really feel less sure than you seem to that he could have found music which would completely transcend the apparent ugliness of the dramatic situation and justify it on some deeper, mythical level of meaning. Myth was not his home territory, as I'm sure he was acutely aware as he played through his piano scores of Tristan and Parsifal. But it is indeed a great loss that time ran out for him and for this, the project which might have initiated a new phase in his creative life.

As a postscript I do want to put in a kind word for Alfano, who I feel did about as good a job with someone else's opera as anyone could be expected to. I recently acquired a CD of his complete original ending which, if it doesn't resolve the dramatic situation, gives us more time to accept it, and to the accompaniment of some nice music. The voices of the principals soaring over the chorus and orchestra at the climax is, I read somewhere, in accord with Puccini's intentions. Anyway, it's just damned thrilling. (That recording was of a live performance in NY in 1985, with Linda Kern and Jon Fredric West under Christopher Keene. It's available as a bonus on the Accademia label release of the 1971 performance of Alfano's Risurrezione with Magda Olivero.)


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

The plots ridiculous, but the music is great.
I like Alfanos ending. Just repeat the big tune.
Why not ?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> As a postscript I do want to put in a kind word for Alfano, who I feel did about as good a job with someone else's opera as anyone could be expected to.


A postscript to my postscript: What does anybody think of Berio's ending?


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> A postscript to my postscript: What does anybody think of Berio's ending?


I didn't care for it. I like the big tune ending


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Wonderful essay, HumphreyAppleby. The plot of Turandot has always troubled me, and up to now I have simply had to throw up my hands, sit back, and enjoy some of Puccini's most exciting music (as someone else here said, with Nilsson and Corelli singing, who cares what it all means?). But your words prompt me to take another look. I still suspect that the jolt of Calaf and Turandot getting it on over the corpse of poor little Liu will remain uncomfortable; Puccini, with his infallible theatrical instincts, must have recognized the difficulty and felt that making this juxtaposition palatable required a creative effort beyond anything he had attempted before. I really feel less sure than you seem to that he could have found music which would completely transcend the apparent ugliness of the dramatic situation and justify it on some deeper, mythical level of meaning. Myth was not his home territory, as I'm sure he was acutely aware as he played through his piano scores of Tristan and Parsifal. But it is indeed a great loss that time ran out for him and for this, the project which might have initiated a new phase in his creative life.


Thank you, that's very kind of you.

I think that Puccini had been doing myth in his own way before _Turandot_. As William Berger talk about in his wonderful essay, "The Myth of Tosca", the word myth has a much different valence in a place like Rome or Athens then it does in America, or even norther Europe. The example he uses is, of course, _Tosca_, in which he describes the battle between two strong cultural forces, Apollo and Dionysus, as played out by the persons of Scarpia and Tosca, respectively. But the reason why this isn't more discussed is that it is nowhere really mentioned in the opera directly. All we get are small clues: Tosca is a woman of the theatre, the wine leads her to the knife; Scarpia is an enforcer of laws and order, etc. So these archetypal characters are playing out a symbolic drama, in addition to a standard _melodramma_ (not to be confused with "melodrama"). In _La fanciulla_, there is clearly a kind of existential/symbolic plot going on behind the "real" one. I think, and many others have suggested, the _Il trittico_ is a retelling of Dante's _Commedia_ with a modern inversion of the values of the original. So I think "myth" is very much Puccini's thing, but the outright way in which it was being done in _Turandot_ is indeed new for him. But given the fact that over the course of each successive opera, Puccini innovated musically, dramatically, and stylistically, I think that it was in his nature to incorporate the new into his being. In some of the sketches I hear where he might have gone, and I cite the finale of _Fanciulla_ as an example of his achieving something similar before.



> As a postscript I do want to put in a kind word for Alfano, who I feel did about as good a job with someone else's opera as anyone could be expected to. I recently acquired a CD of his complete original ending which, if it doesn't resolve the dramatic situation, gives us more time to accept it, and to the accompaniment of some nice music. The voices of the principals soaring over the chorus and orchestra at the climax is, I read somewhere, in accord with Puccini's intentions. Anyway, it's just damned thrilling. (That recording was of a live performance in NY in 1985, with Linda Kern and Jon Fredric West under Christopher Keene. It's available as a bonus on the Accademia label release of the 1971 performance of Alfano's Risurrezione with Magda Olivero.)


Perhaps I was a bit strong. Alfano's ending is acceptable, which, when tacked onto the end of a masterpiece, isn't acceptable. Of course, Toscannini and Ricordi didn't help, as they chose Alfano over Puccini explicit direction that he wanted Zandonai to complete the opera, and Arturo denied Alfano access to the orchestral score until he had nearly finished his work. Alfano got the rotten assignment of all time, and it shows. I have heard the full ending, and it is significantly better, but it's not enough. He doesn't use even half of Puccini's sketches, and seems to have no understanding of what the opera is about.

I've read that that Puccini intended to use Nessun dorma in the finale (who wouldn't?), but I find it highly unlikely that he would have given us such a simplistic restatement of the theme in a unison chorus. _Turandot_ was his greatest love of all, and I think he would have pulled out all the stops.


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> A postscript to my postscript: What does anybody think of Berio's ending?


I liked it very much, and I thought that it was better than Alfano's. But it doesn't sound anything at all like the rest of the opera, and so it be very incongruous. Something of a fusion of the two that actually followed the sketches would be great.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Turandot is a gruesome fairy tale. The music is great apart from Ping, Pang and Pong out staying their welcome.
The problem comes when seeing it. It does require a tremendous suspension of disbelief as most Turandots do not look as if they would make you fall in love with them on first sight!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

HumphreyAppleby said:


> I think that Puccini had been doing myth in his own way before _Turandot_. As William Berger talk about in his wonderful essay, "The Myth of Tosca", the word myth has a much different valence in a place like Rome or Athens then it does in America, or even norther Europe. The example he uses is, of course, _Tosca_, in which he describes the battle between two strong cultural forces, Apollo and Dionysus, as played out by the persons of Scarpia and Tosca, respectively. But the reason why this isn't more discussed is that it is nowhere really mentioned in the opera directly. All we get are small clues: Tosca is a woman of the theatre, the wine leads her to the knife; Scarpia is an enforcer of laws and order, etc. So these archetypal characters are playing out a symbolic drama, in addition to a standard _melodramma_ (not to be confused with "melodrama"). In _La fanciulla_, there is clearly a kind of existential/symbolic plot going on behind the "real" one. I think, and many others have suggested, the _Il trittico_ is a retelling of Dante's _Commedia_ with a modern inversion of the values of the original. So I think "myth" is very much Puccini's thing, but the outright way in which it was being done in _Turandot_ is indeed new for him. But given the fact that over the course of each successive opera, Puccini innovated musically, dramatically, and stylistically, I think that it was in his nature to incorporate the new into his being. In some of the sketches I hear where he might have gone, and I cite the finale of _Fanciulla_ as an example of his achieving something similar before.


Your Puccinist creds are clearly greater than mine - but Tosca as myth? That feels to me like stretching a concept past the breaking point. I suppose any human situation can be analyzed in mythic terms, insofar as myth is concerned in symbolic form with the basic conditions and situations of human life. But... Scarpia as an Apollonian figure representing order? Just because he's chief of police? I don't see anything Apollonian about him in his words or his music, both of which reveal, under the uniform of respectability, a violent, power-drunk sensualist, womanizer, and sexual sadist. I can see a bit more of a mythic quality in Fanciulla, which is farther from the gritty details of verismo melodrama and takes place in an imaginary American wild west which invites a more suggestive, less realistic sort of production. But really, I find Turandot a fundamentally different beast, a fairy tale which has real archetypal suggestiveness and absolutely cannot make rational sense on the level of literal reality. That is not to say that I see it as carrying out its suggested themes in a consistent or satisfying way; I don't believe Puccini had a mythical imagination as, say, Wagner did (well, no one else did either!), and for all its musical innovativeness and interest I don't find Turandot a fully satisfying work, Alfano aside. But that doesn't get in the way of my enjoying most of it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

HumphreyAppleby said:


> I liked it very much, and I thought that it was better than Alfano's. But it doesn't sound anything at all like the rest of the opera, and so it be very incongruous. Something of a fusion of the two that actually followed the sketches would be great.


Except for finding it better than Alfano's, I would agree. The stylistic incongruity is just too extreme. Maybe someone will come along and create that fusion?

Actually, I doubt it.


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> but Tosca as myth? That feels to me like stretching a concept past the breaking point. I suppose any human situation can be analyzed in mythic terms, insofar as myth is concerned in symbolic form with the basic conditions and situations of human life. But... Scarpia as an Apollonian figure representing order? Just because he's chief of police? I don't see anything Apollonian about him in his words or his music, both of which reveal, under the uniform of respectability, a violent, power-drunk sensualist, womanizer, and sexual sadist.


Not to get too caught up in _Tosca_, but I think that you have to look at Scarpia's motivation. It's about power and control for him, not some kind of desire to escape himself. Sexuality isn't necessarily a Dionysian characteristic; it depends on what the cause of those impulses are. At any rate, the point is that _Tosca_ is not just about the surface storyline, but about the deeper clash of cultural forces, and I think William Berger makes a convincing argument that we're looking at mythically inspired clash.



> But really, I find Turandot a fundamentally different beast, a fairy tale which has real archetypal suggestiveness and absolutely cannot make rational sense on the level of literal reality. That is not to say that I see it as carrying out its suggested themes in a consistent or satisfying way; I don't believe Puccini had a mythical imagination as, say, Wagner did (well, no one else did either!), and for all its musical innovativeness and interest I don't find Turandot a fully satisfying work, Alfano aside. But that doesn't get in the way of my enjoying most of it.


I agree with the first part- it is his only exclusively mythic opera. On the other hand, I disagree that it does not display continuity of theme. Puccini certainly didn't have the mythical imagination of Wagner. But my whole point is that there is more than one definition of myth. A myth can be an old and fantastical story, or it can be an everyday story in which the living archetypes are just as active, but clothed in the imagery of modern sensibilities. _Turandot_ is closer to the first kind, and therefore closer to Wagner. But Puccini's intent was not to offer us a vision of transcendence into another world, but to bring transcendent beings into ours. He wanted Turandot, the principessa altera, brought down from her height and into the real world. You cannot be more opposed to something like _Tristan_ with such an intent, which makes his side note "poi Tristano" all the more fascinating. Here's the quote from Puccini on what _Turandot_ is about, and what the ending was to be like: *"These two beings, who stand...outside the world, are transformed into humans through love, and this love must take possession of everybody on the stage in an orchestral peroration"*

In Puccini's earlier operas, the poor, the commonplace, and the powerless are raised up tot he level and importance of myth and kings, a respect they rarely receive; in _Turandot_, he is doing the opposite. These archetypal beings are becoming human. So I see that Puccini had a very clear conception of the opera, the themes are clearly defined if you look for them, and the musical composition was beginning again just before he died. If we had his ending, there would be none of these questions.


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Except for finding it better than Alfano's, I would agree. The stylistic incongruity is just too extreme. Maybe someone will come along and create that fusion?
> 
> Actually, I doubt it.


I think Berio's ending is better than Alfano's edited ending (so there's plenty of blame for Toscanini here), but about equal or just under Alfano's complete ending. But there are still major, major problems with Alfano's dramatic choices, which subvert the intent of the opera and are incongruous. And the sing-along ending still drives me crazy. What we really need is for somebody to go back to the original sketches, and after a study of the orchestration of the rest of the opera (and restore the omitted parts of the libretto, which are very important),and produce a finale that is stylistically and dramatically coherent. As you said, that's highly unlikely for the moment.


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## perempe (Feb 27, 2014)

hpowders said:


> I mean when do you simply suspend belief and put up with watching a 250 pound Gilda in Rigoletto?
> You do it when she brings you to tears singing an unbelievable Caro nome.



our Gilda was in shape.

but our Daland (Der fliegende Holländer) was the youngest, and our Grandmother Buryjovka (Jenufa) was pretty young compared to the role.


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## Ven (Dec 3, 2010)

The problem with Puccini's opera is that Calaf and Turandot are not meant to "get it on over Liu's corpse", as someone mentioned. Puccini came to realize this, but could not figure out an alternative ending, and that's why he was unable to finish the story. Alfano's work is an abomination, a forced happy ending juxtaposed over a tale that cannot have one. Turandot has murdered untold numbers of suitors, and both she and Calaf have the saintly Liu's blood on their hands. How can there be any redemption conceived through their lust?

This is not a love story, but a tragedy.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ven said:


> The problem with Puccini's opera is that Calaf and Turandot are not meant to "get it on over Liu's corpse", as someone mentioned. Puccini came to realize this, but could not figure out an alternative ending, and that's why he was unable to finish the story. Alfano's work is an abomination, a forced happy ending juxtaposed over a tale that cannot have one. Turandot has murdered untold numbers of suitors, and both she and Calaf have the saintly Liu's blood on their hands. How can there be any redemption conceived through their lust?
> 
> This is not a love story, but a tragedy.


You make a compelling statement here, Ven, one impossible to argue with if the story of the opera is taken as realism. If the events culminating in the self-sacrificial death of Liu were to occur in real life, it would be nothing less than horrifying for Calaf and Turandot to proceed to declare their mutual love. But then it's hard to imagine a rational man being smitten by a such a murderous harpy to begin with. Obviously we can't approach this opera as a realistic story, any more than we can so regard the mythical dramas of Wagner. I'm not suggesting that Puccini in this work is operating on the level of depth-psychology that gives Wagner's _Ring_ or _Parsifal_ their many-faceted suggestive power; _Turandot_ is a lot simpler, more of a fairy tale. Humphrey Appleby, in his earlier posts, discusses it eloquently, and probably comes as close as anyone could to showing how the tragedy of Liu's death could be made acceptable as an instrument of redemption if the characters are viewed as mythical archetypes.

That said, I am still not comfortable with _Turandot_, even taken as a fairy tale or myth. If Liu were just some anonymous girl from the crowd, a mere representative of murdered innocence, or perhaps a divine being, an angel incarnated for sacrifice, we would not be so disturbed by her death. But she is presented as a companion of Calaf, and her whole essence is her love for him, a love capable of going the whole distance. This sets her apart from, and on a higher moral plane than, anyone else in the opera; compared with all these fairy tale characters, she feels like a full-blooded human being. Her suicide is too personal, too pathetic, to be merely symbolic or instrumental, she is too fully human to be reduced to such a role, and she makes Calaf and Turandot, and the games they play, seem hollow and embarrassing. The pathos of Liu's death, heartbreakingly drawn out in Puccini's music, is so unprecedented that it jerks us into reality, breaks the mythical frame, destroys the magical procenium arch which keeps the putatively symbolic action at its necessary remove, and strains the suspension of disbelief which a good fairy tale should elicit without effort.

Puccini did indeed want a happy ending for these inhuman characters, one that would not seem forced, and in order to create it he would have had to humanize them in the end, to somehow justify the tragedy of Liu's death, to transfigure it retrospectively. It would be nice to think that he could have done something musically extraordinary (which Alfano understandably could not do) to make this happen in the minds and hearts of the audience.

I will always remain skeptical.


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## Bardamu (Dec 12, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> A postscript to my postscript: What does anybody think of Berio's ending?


The same that I think about Alfano's two endings, it isn't what Puccini would have done.
No matter who would take the task to complete the final part, being him Tommasini, Zandonai, Alfano, Mascagni or Berio, no one could match what Puccini had in his head.
It's a pity really but I'm still grateful we got what we got with Turandot.



DavidA said:


> Turandot is a gruesome fairy tale.


Rather oddly since the original tale by Gozzi is more of a commedy.
Busoni's Turandot is closer to the spirit of the original source.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

Sutherland Pavarotti on Decca for me


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Y
> 
> That said, I am still not comfortable with _Turandot_, even taken as a fairy tale or myth. If Liu were just some anonymous girl from the crowd, a mere representative of murdered innocence, or perhaps a divine being, an angel incarnated for sacrifice, we would not be so disturbed by her death. But she is presented as a companion of Calaf, and her whole essence is her love for him, a love capable of going the whole distance. This sets her apart from, and on a higher moral plane than, anyone else in the opera; compared with all these fairy tale characters, she feels like a full-blooded human being. Her suicide is too personal, too pathetic, to be merely symbolic or instrumental, she is too fully human to be reduced to such a role, and she makes Calaf and Turandot, and the games they play, seem hollow and embarrassing. The pathos of Liu's death, heartbreakingly drawn out in Puccini's music, is so unprecedented that it jerks us into reality, breaks the mythical frame, destroys the magical procenium arch which keeps the putatively symbolic action at its necessary remove, and strains the suspension of disbelief which a good fairy tale should elicit without effort.
> 
> .


We have to remember that in the age when the opera is supposed to be set that slaves were perfectly disposable beings. Hence they probably wouldn't have bothered too much of a slave girl died. Calaf just says poor little thing and then they get on with it. Very distasteful, but then Puccini was himself particularly heartless to women, so it probably didn't bother him too much!


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## HumphreyAppleby (Apr 11, 2013)

DavidA said:


> We have to remember that in the age when the opera is supposed to be set that slaves were perfectly disposable beings. Hence they probably wouldn't have bothered too much of a slave girl died. Calaf just says poor little thing and then they get on with it. Very distasteful, but then Puccini was himself particularly heartless to women, so it probably didn't bother him too much!


1. Calaf and Turandot are rather heartless throughout the opera; that's sort of the point. If they were lovely people, they wouldn't need a transformation at the end.

2. Sections of the libretto went unused by Alfano, and what was used was later cut by Toscanini. The unused portions of the libretto, while not dwelling extensively on Liu's death, make it clearer that what Turandot is feeling is remorse.

3. What evidence is there of Puccini being heartless to women? He was a libertine, certainly, but I've never read of an instance where he treated women particularly badly. He may have been not the greatest guy in that respect, but certainly no Debussy. and in his works there's nothing of the blatant sexism of Mozart's operas that people totally ignore (in particular the gorgeously written but painfully sexist _Zauberfloete_), or the superiority felt by Wagner in that that a real woman for him was one who would die for him... Women suffer and die in some of Puccini's operas, a) just like every opera by every other composer ever, b) because Puccini identified with the women in his operas and he suffered a lot himself, and c) yet they are also the people who are in control of the situations or are at least more competent than the men. _La Fanciulla del west_, anyone?

4.


Wodduck said:


> The pathos of Liu's death, heartbreakingly drawn out in Puccini's music, is so unprecedented that it jerks us into reality, breaks the mythical frame, destroys the magical procenium arch which keeps the putatively symbolic action at its necessary remove, and strains the suspension of disbelief which a good fairy tale should elicit without effort.


Yes, that's what it's supposed to do! As usual, you're right on the money, Wodduck. But this time you're just ever so slightly short on the meaning of it. Her suicide forces us into reality- including Turandot and Calaf. Before they could be apart from the world, archetypal, but now, faced with this real, pure, dead girl, they are forced to come down from their symbolic heights and live in the world. As Puccini said of his vision for the ending,



Giacomo Puccini said:


> These two beings, who stand...outside the world, are transformed into humans through love, and this love must take possession of everybody on the stage in an orchestral peroration


I saw _Turandot_ recently at the Detroit Opera House. It was an unexpectedly excellent production, with unexpectedly great singing. The problem really is that ending. We're talking about the highly original, esoteric ambition of one of the great opera composers. Is it any wonder that we don't get it now that it's left unfinished? What if Wagner had never finished the Ring? Wouldn't just look like a sordid tale of a bunch of Gods committing murder and incest? And the hero is the product of a brother and sister, who later falls in love with his aunt?

I admit to the possibility that Puccini couldn't have finished _Turandot_. I admit to the possibility that he was a complex person with the capacity for darkness. I just don't get where people get off saying that he was some kind of horrible misogynist and almost serial-killer-like personality who only managed to hide his meticulously cruel nature in catchy melodies. Not only does that not fit the accounts of his personality given by the people who actually knew him, and not critics like Mosco Carner and Mike Tanner speculating from their anachronistic armchairs, but it doesn't fit the facts of his operas. His operas are about love. For him, that was obverse of the coin with suffering. He said as much. It's not really that hard.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

HumphreyAppleby said:


> 1. Calaf and Turandot are rather heartless throughout the opera; that's sort of the point. If they were lovely people, they wouldn't need a transformation at the end.
> 
> 2. Sections of the libretto went unused by Alfano, and what was used was later cut by Toscanini. The unused portions of the libretto, while not dwelling extensively on Liu's death, make it clearer that what Turandot is feeling is remorse.
> 
> ...


H.A., Sir, there is _no one_ I would rather have put me in my proper place! Even when I differ with you, it's your hand I want "on the other hand." I look forward to your going after me on _Tosca!_ :tiphat:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Today I discovered the great diva Vera Galupe-Borszkh (nee Ira Siff), a distinguished representative of that rarest of vocal types, the _sopranista castrata simulata traumatica_. It was a revelation! No one in my experience has projected "In questa reggia" with such penetrating tone and detailed articulation of the text. I would suggest that this rendering is essential to understanding what any aspiring Calaf is up against, and I suspect that wide dissemination of it could keep many heads in place.


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## gellio (Nov 7, 2013)

drpraetorus said:


> Our local opera company is doing Turandot. I have a real problem with the story line. Why would anyone want to marry a bloodthirsty tyrant like Turandot? It's a bit like Caligula having a beauty contest where all the losers are executed.


The music is wonderful. My favorite Puccini score.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

drpraetorus said:


> It's a bit like Caligula having a beauty contest where all the losers are executed.


I'd pay good money to see that opera!


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

HumphreyAppleby said:


> What if Wagner had never finished the Ring? Wouldn't just look like a sordid tale of a bunch of Gods committing murder and incest? And the hero is the product of a brother and sister, who later falls in love with his aunt?


No. Especially not if you hold, as I do, that Wagner reached the high point of his dramatic conception for the Ring well before the ending--with _Die Walküre_.


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## Bardamu (Dec 12, 2011)

drpraetorus said:


> Our local opera company is doing Turandot. I have a real problem with the story line. Why would anyone want to marry a bloodthirsty tyrant like Turandot? It's a bit like Caligula having a beauty contest where all the losers are executed.


Non senti? Il suo profumo è nell'aria!
È nell'anima

Never underestimate the scent of a woman


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

PetrB said:


> LUST FOR POWER AND WEALTH, (doh!) I agree, making of it as if it were a romance is pretty silly, but hey, that is a commercial sentimentalism about which Puccini and his chosen librettists were more than canny


Bingo! Power, thy name is Calaf.


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