![]() ![]() ![]() He may have doubted his ability to tackle such a metaphysical theme, remote from the simple, down-to-earth, human tragedies of Mimì dying in her garret, or Ciocio-san committing seppuku after her lover abandoned her. What Puccini had in mind, apparently, was something on the lines of the Liebesnacht or the Frau ohne Schatten or Fideliofinales – but he died before he could write it. “These two almost superhuman beings must descend through love to the level of mankind, and this love must at the end take possession of the whole stage in a great orchestral peroration.” “It must be a great duet,” Puccini wrote. Puccini proposed a radiant love duet on Wagnerian lines – “Then Tristan!” – that showed Turandot’s transfiguration. The act of self-sacrifice inspired by love thaws the Princess’s icy heart. The catalyst is the suicide of Liù, stabbing herself rather than reveal the Prince’s name. Fisher (Puccini’s Turandot Study Guide and Libretto, 2017) recognises, an archetype: the male-hating woman who fears love, but who “finally capitulates with fervid passion, her transformation a powerful statement about humanity’s yearning and desire for the fulfilment of love”. “The passion of Turandot … for so long has been suffocated beneath the ashes of her immense pride,” Puccini wrote to his librettists. Turandot is the most unsympathetic of all Puccini’s heroines: a multiple murderess, cousin to Strauss’s Salome, another ghastly princess with links to the moon, penchant for decapitation, and sexual obsession. It also boasts “Nessun dorma”, possibly the most famous opera aria in the world, and the moving death of Liù. The first two-and-a-half acts are magnificent: crowd scenes, ethereal moonlit choruses, funeral processions, ironic commedia dell’arte, death-defying challenges, and the mighty Riddle Scene, where a prince wagers his head to win life and love in a stratospheric battle on the high C’s. Source: Archivio Storico Ricordi – Collezione Digitale.
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