Metropolitan Opera broadcasts continue on Classical 90.5 at 11:00 a.m. this Saturday, January 30, with a performance of Turandot by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. The performance will run approximately three hours and thirty-five minutes. Paolo Carignani conducts.
Puccini’s final opera is an epic fairy tale set in a China of legend, loosely based on a play by 18th-century Italian dramatist Carlo Gozzi. Featuring a most unusual score with an astounding and innovative use of chorus and orchestra, it is still recognizably Puccini, bursting with instantly appealing melody. The unenviable task of completing the opera’s final scene upon Puccini’s sudden death was left to the composer Franco Alfano. Conductor Arturo Toscanini oversaw Alfano’s contribution and led the world premiere.
In Gozzi’s play, the original commedia dell’arte characters wandered from Italy to China and were members of the Imperial court. Their comments satirized Venetian politics and mores of the times. Puccini and his librettists dispensed with any such relevance. The China of this opera, set in “legendary times,” is a mythical land where the clash of the sexes is drawn in high relief.
The large Turandot orchestra calls for a wide variety of instruments, including alto saxophones, celesta, bass xylophone, harps, and an organ. There are several genuine Chinese themes that are integrated into the score in a suave and brilliantly original manner, including the big imperial anthem in Act II. The opera also contains moments of sheer melodic beauty in Puccini’s most lyrical vein, most notably in the tenor’s unforgettable song of triumph, “Nessun dorma!,” which opens Act III.
THE CAST
Turandot: Nina Stemme
Liù: Anita Hartig
Calaf: Marco Berti
Timur: Alexander Tsymbalyuk
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