Turandot

Turandot (UK /ˈtjʊər.ən.dɒt/ or US /ˈtʊr.ən.dɑːt/; Italian pronunciation: [turanˈdɔt]; see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, completed by Franco Alfano, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.

Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's 1801 adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot by Carlo Gozzi. The original story is based on the story of Turan-Dokht (daughter of Turan) from the epic Haft Peykar (The Seven Beauties), work of 12th-century Persian poet Nizami. The opera's story is set in China and involves Prince Calaf, who falls in love with the cold Princess Turandot. To obtain permission to marry her, a suitor has to solve three riddles; any wrong answer results in death. Calaf passes the test, but Turandot still refuses to marry him. He offers her a way out: if she is able to learn his name before dawn the next day, then at daybreak he will die.

Turandot (disambiguation)

Turandot is a 1926 opera by Giacomo Puccini.

Other works of that title include:

See also

Turandot (Gozzi)

Turandot (1762) is a commedia dell'arte play by Carlo Gozzi after a supposedly Persian story from the collection Les Mille et un jours (1710–1712) by François Pétis de la Croix. NB Not to be confused with One Thousand and One Nights. Gozzi's Turandot was first performed at the Teatro San Samuele, Venice, on 22 January 1762.

Gozzi's play has given rise to a number of subsequent artistic endeavours, including combinations of: versions/translations by Schiller, Karl Vollmoeller and Brecht; theatrical productions by Goethe, Max Reinhardt and Yevgeny Vakhtangov; incidental music by Weber, Busoni and Wilhelm Stenhammar; and operas by Puccini, Busoni and Havergal Brian.

Original play and performance

Turandot was deliberately written in the Commedia del'arte style by Gozzi, as part of a campaign in his literary war against the bourgeois, realistic works of Pietro Chiari and Carlo Goldoni. Gozzi was intimate with the out-of work theatre troupe of Antonio Sacchi, an inveterate commedia Truffaldino. It was first performed by Sacchi's troupe at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice on 22 January 1762, and received seven subsequent performances. The choice of theatre itself was a pointed attack on Goldoni, since he had been the theatre's director between 1737–1741. In the end, Gozzi won his literary war: according to his Memoirs, "Chiari stopped writing when he saw that his dramas ceased to take. Goldoni went to Paris, to seek his fortune there, whereof we shall be duly informed in his Memoirs."