I say: " ... but is it Puccini?"

No trace of tonality, orchestration already post-Schoenbergian... Puccini is a genius, he is probably half a century ahead in this piece ...

in reality it is perfectly in tune with those times, and that is the amazing thing. In Turandot there is a famous quotation of the Tristan chord, in Tosca there is a scene made entirely on an augmented triad and "Recondita Armonia", the tenor aria of the first act, begins in an IDENTICAL way to Debussy's La Fille Aux Cheveux De Lin.

According to what my friends say, and some of my music history books, the most crazy pearls are found in Il Tabarro and La Fanciulla del West. I listened to the first one, not studied, and it is wonderful. Of the second I really know nothing...

tra l'altro, per chi non sapesse la storia di Suor Angelica... she is a nun, from a noble family. Her aunt forces her to take her vows after she becomes pregnant. She gives birth and knows nothing more of her son. One day in the convent, the Aunt Princess returns to ask her to renounce an inheritance; Angelica asks her for news of the child and she says he is dead (in a wonderful piece that is practically the only contralto aria ever written by Puccini). Angelica effectively goes mad, sings "Senza mamma", a heartbreaking aria, of which that flower aria is actually a kind of coda. Here Angelica gathers various poisonous flowers to commit suicide. She drinks the poison and immediately after regrets it, screaming like a madwoman, because she dies in mortal sin. But dying, she has a vision of the Madonna who places the baby Jesus in her arms...

You know I am a heart of stone, but with Suor Angelica I cry uncontrollably. It was the Trittico opera preferred by Puccini, who had a sister who was a nun :-)

here is the aria of the Aunt Princess. She is tormented by the voice of Angelica's dead mother... that is, the Aunt Princess is a sort of medium... and she is one of the most hated characters in opera history

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=867_ZR5FvhE

and this is the final scene of the opera, with an impressive Renata Scotto. If you don't feel like crying, don't watch it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVM63R20Fhg

and here is Liù's "Tanto amore segreto" in Turandot. It is practically a small romance that precedes the much more famous "Tu che di gel sei cinta". But in my opinion, it is the most beautiful piece of the opera. The melodies are all circular, like a music box that becomes enchanted... I cry here too :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imNdpkkBe0E

Open content (youtube)

Open content (youtube)

Open content (youtube)

Let's say that beyond the discussion of "quotations," to understand how advanced the harmonic fabric of Turandot is, it is enough to reduce it to the piano; the orchestration hides and softens many "edges," but taken without Puccini's orchestral refinements, it is truly Berg, if not more advanced. Obviously, Berg, as he was the one of the three from the Second Viennese School who had an ear more tuned toward the "past" than toward the present/future.

Late-career Schoenberg is truly advanced in terms of sonority... let's not talk about Webern, for whom Puccini is certainly ahead compared to 1918, even listening to the music of his contemporaries... but by how much? Let us also remember that 10 years today are not like 10 years from a century ago.

ah, a little curiosity I'm just noticing now. At the end of the Turandot video (Turandot "rip it from them", Ping "call Pu tin pao", Calaf "no, cursed, cursed") there is Corelli (Calaf) who enters COMPLETELY OUT OF TIME and throws the whole choir off ahahaha

in the very last seconds, the quotation of the Tristan und Isolde chord

e I am also re-modifying this message to say that I modified the previous message by adding a few things