Word: puccini
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...COMO PUCCINI: Turandot, Birgit Nilsson, Renata Tejussi Bjoeriling, Giorgio Tozzi Rome Opera House Or and Chorus conducted by Leinsdorf. RCA Victor LM ndot is Puccini's best and yet frustrating opera. "Best," be of the scope of its profound and dramatic characterize "Frustrating," because the touchstone, its final duet, not written by Puccini but one instead by a mediocre of his, Franco Alfano...
Turandot differs from Puccini's operas even more than Fal differs from any Verdi work. intended his last opera to effects which never had in him before. He composed a majestic work featuring and very demanding chor and two super-heroes, and the unfeeling Chinese as Turandot...
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...
...Though Puccini intended the super-heroes to become more human, he wrote some magnificent super-music for the first two acts which depict them in their over-sized stature...