Turandot

About the opera

• Run time: 3hrs 00min, 2 intermissions
• Sung in: Italian
• Subtitles: English, Italian and other languages
• Opera house: Vienna State Opera

Turandot represents the zenith of Puccini’s career, an extraordinary spectacle of high drama and musical invention. The opera is set in a China of legend, a mythic realm viewed from the exoticizing perspective of 20th-century Europeans. Featuring a most unusual score with an astounding and innovative use of chorus and orchestra, it is still recognizably Puccini, bursting with instantly appealing melody.

There are several genuine Chinese themes that are integrated into the score in a suave and brilliantly original manner, including the big imperial anthem in Act II. The opera also contains moments of sheer melodic beauty in Puccini’s most lyrical vein, most notably in the tenor’s unforgettable song of triumph, “Nessun dorma”.

The unenviable task of completing the opera’s final scene upon Puccini’s sudden death was left to the composer Franco Alfano. Conductor Arturo Toscanini oversaw Alfano’s contribution and led the world premiere.

Ticket information

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Vienna State Opera

Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna View in Google Maps

How to get there:
Subway: U1, U2, U4 to Karlsplatz
Trams: 1, 2, D, 62, 71 to Opernring

Creators

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.