Turandot

“Al’alba vincerò - at sunrise I will win“, the unknown prince bawls out to the city, making him one of the few heroes of Italian opera whose arioso sleeplessness is due to confidence rather than despair. The others have to despair instead. Primarily the inhabitants of the city, in which – “nessun dorma“ – no one is allowed to sleep because everyone has to search for the name of the unknown man on the highest orders and under threat of the death penalty. That Turandot should actually end well by Puccini’s standards can be felt – like so much else – in the central tenor aria of the work. Puccini knew better than anyone how to force an emotional involvement on the audience through the merciless immediacy of his musical language. The piece itself ends happily, albeit without Puccini, who had to lay down his arms in his battle against laryngeal cancer before the finale was finished. And so Turandot joins the ranks of the great opera fragments of the 20th century. But not only is the piece more or less a chimera, the title character herself also seems to be primarily a projection: “Turandot does not exist! Only nothingness exists“, Ping, Pang and Pong warn the unknown prince to prevent him from attempting the three riddles that need to be solved in order to win the emperor’s daughter Turandot. Anna Sophie Mahler, whose Stuttgart production of Saint François d’Assise 2023 was named the “most unusual opera experience of the year“ by the journal Opernwelt, will set out 100 years after the premiere of Puccini’s enigmatic last opera in search of the “fluid of love“ with which the composer wanted to pacify nerves stretched to the limit in the opera’s finale. Because, this much is certain: this fluidum would also be useful today.