Giacomo Puccini
An oriental fairy-tale in the Italian opera
Premiere 2. 8. 2019
Peking, in legendary times.
Princess Turandot will only marry the man who can solve her three riddles. The suitors who fail to answer them lose their lives. One of the suitors, the Persian prince, is about to be beheaded when the deposed king of Tartary Timur, accompanied by the young slave girl Liu, appears amidst the shouting crowd at the place of execution. By mere chance, they meet Timur’s son Calaf who is fleeing from his enemies. Timur has remained completely alone – only Liu stays loyally by his side. This is because once long ago Calaf smiled at her, and she has been secretly in love with him ever since. When, however, Calaf sees Turandot, both her bewitching beauty and cruelty make him contend for the Princess. He ignores the warnings of his father, Liu, and the three imperial ministers. Even the Emperor himself tries to dissuade the unknown stranger from his intentions.
Before the Princess asks her riddles, she narrates the story of her ancestress, the Princess Lou-Ling, who was once abducted, disgraced and murdered by the Tartar ruler. It is in her name that Turandot now takes vengeance on all men who try to win her hand. The time for solving the riddles has come. What is born each night and dies each dawn? Calaf answers correctly: Hope. What flickers red and warm like a flame, but is not fire? Calaf gives the correct answer again: Blood. The Princess presents her third riddle: What is ice which gives you fire but which your fire freezes still more? The silence becomes stifling, when Calaf cries out victoriously: Turandot. All the court cheers, only the Princess stubbornly pleads with her father to cancel the given promise. Calaf, however, does not want to humiliate the Princess but win her heart. Therefore, he offers himself to her mercy again. If she guesses his name before sunrise, he will die at the executioner’s hands.
Turandot tries desperately to discover the Prince’s identity and threatens all her subjects with death. The ministers promise the Prince riches, pleasures and fame, only if he tells them his name, when suddenly the guards bring Timur and Liu, who had been seen with him. The Princess herself tries to force them to reveal the secret, but Liu, to spare her master from suffering, declares that she is the only one who knows the foreigner’s name. Yet she refuses to reveal it, even under torture. Her resolve impresses the Princess so much that she asks her what gives her such courage. Liu answers, ‘Love’, and foretells that Turandot will also one day learn about that miracle. At an unguarded moment, she then kills herself. The Princess is genuinely shaken by her sacrifice. Later on, when Turandot is alone with the Prince, his kiss melts her coldness, and tears flow down her cheeks for the first time. Calaf now believes that the Princess is able to accept his heart, and reveals her his name. At dawn, Turandot announces the foreigner’s name. It is Love.
The story of Prince Kalaf’s love for the beautiful yet cruel Princess Turandot, who asked her suitors riddles and had them beheaded after they failed to answer, originally comes from the collection of Persian fairy-tales of the Arabian Nights. The libretto for the opera is based on the adaptation of this tale by the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi. When Puccini composed Turandot, he was consciously striving to create the masterpiece of the late years of his life while fighting with a mortal disease. However, he did not manage to complete his last opera. The finale was taken over by his fellow countryman Franco Alfano, whose arrangement, in the musical production of Mario De Rose and under the direction of Tomáš Pilař, poses an extraordinary experience for the audiences.
