About the opera
- Run time: 3hrs 00min, 2 intermissions
- Sung in: Italian
- Subtitles: English, Italian and other languages
- Opera house: Vienna State Opera
Asmik Grigorian stars as Turandot, the icy Chinese princess who has has sworn that no man shall marry her unless he can correctly answer three riddles. Failure means death. Ivan Gyngazov is Calàf, the unknown prince who, captivated by Turandot’s beauty, takes up the challenge. Kristina Mkhitaryan sings Liù, the faithful slave girl who gives her life to save Calàf, and Dan Paul Dumitrescu is Timur. Axel Kober conducts.
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Music and Libretto
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) was enormously popular in his lifetime and is generally regarded as the greatest Italian composer of the post-Verdi generation. An operatic composer with a most original gift for lyrical melody, Puccini possessed a masterful technical savoir-faire and an extraordinary sense of the theatre. Although he created only ten operas in a 40-year career, his mature operas remain a firm part of the operatic repertoire and are among the most popular operas ever written.
His third opera, Manon Lescaut, brought him lasting fame and marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Together, they wrote Puccini's three greatest masterpieces: La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904). In 1910, the premiere of La Fanciulla del West took place at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Puccini then composed a lighter piece, La Rondine, performed at the Monte-Carlo Opera. In 1918 Il Trittico premiered at the Metropolitan Opera.
Puccini died in 1924, leaving Turandot unfinished. Conductor Arturo Toscanini entrusted the unenviable task to complete the score to the composer Franco Alfano (1875–1954).
Puccini’s Turandot is loosely based on a play by 18th-century Venetian dramatist Carlo Gozzi. The playwright Giuseppe Adami (1878–1946) and the journalist Renato Simoni (1875–1952) created the libretto for the opera.
Conductor Axel Kober
Turandot Asmik Grigorian
Altoum Jörg Schneider
Timur Dan Paul Dumitrescu
Kalaf Ivan Gyngazov
Liù Kristina Mkhitaryan
Mandarin Attila Mokus
Ping Martin Häßler
Pang Norbert Ernst
Pong Hiroshi Amako
