Waiting for Claudio, I'll give my opinion on this opera that I particularly love, except for the finale which is not by Puccini and which I cannot stand.
“Turandot” is the thirteenth and final opera by Giacomo Puccini. In it, influences of Debussy and Stravinsky coexist. It is, therefore, a musical search that was often unusual compared to what the composer had developed up to that point. The musical greatness of “Turandot” lies in its offering itself as a fruit of the multiple flavors of an operatic season that was now exhausted. The composer succeeded in marvelously fusing beautifully late-19th-century style arias such as “Non piangere Liù”, “Nessun dorma”, “Signore ascolta”, “Tu che di gel sei cinta”, and “In questa reggia”, with a very updated choral breath and exquisite, modern orchestration. Right from the beginning, after the Mandarin announces Turandot's law, the crowd with barbaric accents is accompanied by music that recalls the Stravinskian style of those years. Shortly after, the sublime “Inno alla luna” is imbued with a typically Debussyan sonority. This is followed by polytonal passages, melopeas with a sacral taste, pentatonic scales, orientalisms, and more, all accompanied by a truly powerful orchestra never before used by the composer. The reason for the musical greatness of “Turandot” lies, in my opinion, precisely here: in knowing how to offer itself as a fruit of multiple flavors in an operatic season that was now exhausted, now inexorably at sunset, and, as many claim, Liù's tomb was also the tomb of Italian melodrama.
Purtroppo where Puccini got bogged down was in the libretto. In fact, the opera was not finished because of his death, as is usually stated or thought, but precisely because the composer did not know how to finish it. As early as 1923, Puccini had stopped at the tragic death of Liù because the dilemma, at that point, was what worthy conclusion the opera could have after that tragic event, for which the person responsible, albeit indirectly, was Calaf?
On the other hand, the composer himself threw himself into that rebus. It was he who wanted conspicuous variations from Carlo Gozzi's original fairy tale and among these, the most important was the introduction of the figure of Liù—who is not in the original fairy tale—a woman who combines two functions in herself: a faithful support for Timur and the secret lover of Calaf. (In Gozzi, instead of Liù, there is Adelma, a Tartar princess, Turandot's favorite slave). This situation completely upsets the dynamic: Adelma is Turandot's romantic rival but is a completely negative character, and her schemes to take Calaf away from Turandot have the opposite effect of making him fall in love with her. But it is in the finale that a total upheaval consequently occurs. In Gozzi, the aspiring suicide is Calaf who, seeing himself discovered, threatens to kill himself, and Turandot is there to save him. In Puccini, instead, as is known, the one who truly commits suicide—or rather, allows herself to be killed—is Liù, and this as an extreme act of a love that knows it cannot be consummated.
Puccini, very understandably, found himself in great embarrassment about how to finish the opera and became blocked. What is certain is that the finale later made by Alfano is truly inappropriate and absolutely unconvincing. There are conductors who, like the great Toscanini at its premiere in 1926, stop at Liù's death but, much more recently, in 2001, Maestro Luciano Berio prepared a new finale, performed for the first time on January 24, 2002, in the Canary Islands under the direction of Riccardo Chailly. From my point of view, it is a beautiful and absolutely appropriate finale and, in this regard, I propose some passages from an interview Berio gave to Sandro Cappelletto in the newspaper “La Stampa":
Cappelletto: Maestro Berio, was it illness that stopped Puccini?"
Berio: "No, it was the libretto, which I would call shameful. He understood that after Liù's death he could not end in glory with a love duet between Calaf and Turandot. He left precise indications to this effect: "Turandot will end pianissimo". This new Turandot will end exactly like that"
Cappelletto: "In your work, did you take into account Puccini's notes and sketches?"
Berio: "Naturally, yes. The notes are numerous and interesting, often disorganized and here and there even experimental, with hints of a dodecaphonic series. I also returned to previous moments, especially the first act, which is a masterpiece."
Cappelletto: "Will we listen - only - to Puccini, or will his fragments encounter inspirations, creative cells from other composers?"
Berio: "The first two bars of Turandot propose a true generating cell from which references derive to Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony and Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrielieder. And, in"
not finish, to Wagner's Tristan".
Cappelletto: "Among the notes regarding the finale, Puccini left a fascinating annotation: 'Here Tristan'. Why this reference to Wagner?"
Berio: "He was obsessed with Wagner, who had a liberating effect on him, and with the harmonic developments of his music. Liù's last aria, 'Tu che di gel sei cinta', is preceded by some measures directly traceable to Tristan. Puccini was, among the Italians, the first European musician".
Cappelletto: "What prevented him from being considered a radical innovator of musical language?"
Berio: "He was an extremely intelligent man, who aimed for success, being aware of the musical events contemporary to him, but he was still conditioned by the fact that whatever he did had to be successful"
Cappelletto: "Did he set all the words of the libretto to music, or did he make cuts?"
Berio: "Not all of them, but this is nothing new. He makes cuts, for example, even Zubin Mehta in his studio recording. There are some absurd words in the libretto: 'Ride e canta l'infinita nostra felicità', says the chorus in the concluding hymn, and Calaf expresses himself with phrases like 'La bocca fremente'. He is always excited."
Cappelletto: "How would you define the character of the Unknown Prince?"
Berio: "A priapic prince"
Cappelletto: "In the program notes written for the occasion, Marco Uvietta highlights the importance of some of his choices and exclusions, especially regarding the happy ending of the opera, which has always seemed too rapid, poorly motivated. How does your Turandot conclude?"
Berio: "In a less direct, less teleological way. Turandot ends more suspended, as happens in Oriental theater, without giving the story an explicit purpose. Very delicately, just before the end, the memory of Liù will return. Turandot ends with a meditation"."}{
