About the work
Giacomo Puccini's final opera, left unfinished at his death in 1924, was premiered posthumously on 25 April 1926 at La Scala Milan under Arturo Toscanini. Franco Alfano completed the final duet from Puccini's sketches. Based on Carlo Gozzi's commedia dell'arte fable, the work transports the action to a legendary China and represents Puccini's most harmonically adventurous and monumental score.
Plot
The cruel Princess Turandot of Peking will marry only the suitor who can solve three riddles; failure means beheading. An unknown prince—later revealed as the exiled Tartar king Timur's son Calaf—falls instantly in love at the sight of her and strikes the fatal gong to accept the challenge, against the pleas of his blind father and the devoted slave girl Liù. He solves all three riddles, but Turandot recoils from submission. Calaf offers a counter-wager: if she can learn his name by dawn, he will die. Turandot tortures Liù, who loves Calaf and kills herself rather than betray his name. From this point Puccini's own music ends; in Alfano's completion, Calaf's kiss melts Turandot's icy resolve and she proclaims his name to be "Love."
Cultural significance
Turandot is Puccini's most monumental work, demanding enormous orchestral and choral forces and a dramatic soprano of steel for the title role. The aria Nessun dorma became a global phenomenon through Luciano Pavarotti's 1990 World Cup performance, transcending opera entirely. At the premiere, Toscanini reportedly stopped the performance at the last bars Puccini had composed, turning to the audience with the words "Here the maestro laid down his pen." Many productions since have honoured that gesture, and the unfinished ending—with Liù's death as Puccini's true final scene—continues to provoke debate about whether the triumphant Alfano conclusion betrays the opera's emotional core.