Word: calaf
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...Prince Calef, serts his exiled father Timur Turandot's questions, is in answering them. How princess still refuses him. roposes that if she find out before dawn she can dis him as she sees fit. Liu, the vant of Timur who has re faithful to him, claims that knows Calaf's name and suicide rather than reveal before her death, Liu tells Turandot that she has died for Calaf because she loves him. Turandot, moved by Liu's simple, honest love now succumbs to the ardent prince. Humanized by Liu's truly loving sacrifice, Turandot and Calaf...
There are three fairly distinct types of characters and music in the work: the super-heroes, Calaf and Turandot, who sing extremely high, barbarically exciting melodies; the pathetic educators, Liu and Timur, who are alloted simple, quite moving themes reminiscent of earlier Puccini; the commentators, the chorus and Turandot's amusing Chancellor, Ping, Pang and Pong, whose music abruptly shifts from lyric to comic to barbaric. Calaf and Turandot are conceived as opposing extremes. Calaf, the epitome of virility, is adventurous, aggressive, passionate and egocentric. The princess, frigidity personified, is similarly egocentric, but she is fearful of change, defensive...
Some of those who adore the early, sentiment-laden Puccini operas, have decided that Turandot is an "insincere" work. The super-heros are accused of inhuman conduct--which was precisely what Puccini had intended. (In one of his many letters to Giuseppe Adami, the librettist, Puccini had called Calaf and Turandot "almost super-human beings.") However, their inhuman conduct was to become humanized through Liu's example. Calaf's cruel desertion of Liu and Timur and Turandot's vicious behavior towards her subjects and suitors alike was not condoned by Puccini. During the final duet (the part he never completed...
Other dissenters have told me that they cannot listen to Turadot because its Chinese elements, especially in the comic trios of Ping, Pang and Pong, sound so silly. But the cheapness of the chancellors' music is often intentionally used as a parodic foil for the genuine ardor of Calaf and most of the other Chinese effects are designed to underscore the various processions in the work. In stage presentation, the pageantry obscures the flaw...
Beyond a doubt, it is Soprano Nilsson who dominates the production. The famed second act aria, In questa reggia, and the whole scene that follows - in which Turandot poses the riddles which Calaf must solve to save his life and win her hand -is one of the most difficult half-hours in all opera. Callas, who sang a fine Turandot, rarely managed it without alarming wobbles; Nilsson's voice was unshakable...