Word: alfano
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...music I have written up to now," said Giacomo Puccini, "seems a jest in comparison." He was speaking of his last and most ambitious opera, Turandot, which he left unfinished at his death in 1924. Completed by his friend Franco Alfano, Turandot is rarely performed despite the exotic splendors of its score. Chief reasons for its neglect: a certain harshness that sets it apart from the big Puccini favorites (Tosca, Bohème, Butterfly), some devilishly difficult vocal parts, and a need for sumptuous staging...
...what was to Toscanini a perfectly adequate explanation, he turned to the audience in Milan's La Scala and announced simply, "Here Puccini ended his opera." He refused to go a note farther on that occasion, even though he admitted that Puccini's fellow composer Franco Alfano had done a good job of completing the score. Conductors since have not been so finicky; but even so, Turandot (roughly rhymes, with two afloat) has never been as popular as Puccini's Tosca, Madame Butterfly, La Boheme. Last week a New York City Opera audience heard some...