Turandot

“All’alba vincerò—at sunrise I shall triumph,” the unknown prince proclaims to the city, making him one of the few heroes in Italian opera whose sleeplessness stems from confidence rather than despair. The city’s inhabitants, however, must despair, for in this city—“nessun dorma”—no one is allowed to sleep, as everyone is commanded by the highest authority and under threat of the death penalty to search for the stranger’s name. One hundred years after the premiere of Puccini’s opera, which remained a fragment, Anna-Sophie Mahler set out in search of the “aura of love” with which the composer sought to soothe the nerves stretched to the limit in the opera’s finale, and found it in Wagner. Puccini envisioned music that transcended boundaries, aiming more at cosmic principles than at the characters’ psychologies. “Poi Tristano,” he jotted down on a piece of paper shortly before his death in a Brussels hospital. We are happy to fulfill this wish: So, in the end, Tristan. And Isolde.