Turandot

Thomas Van Deursen

Reading time: 5 min.

Three riddles, two impossible love stories, one immortal score: dive into the synopsis of Turandot and listen to some of its musical highlights, selected and commented on by conductor Ouri Bronchti.

Ouri Bronchti: When I heard Turandot for the first time, the very beginning of the opera came as something of a shock. As is often the case with Puccini, there is no real overture and, in this case, not even a prelude. Just ten bars before the first sung notes. You are plunged straight into the action. This opening powerfully depicts a China in decline, a violent environment. Musically, it is arid. The first notes in unison don’t make it easy to detect a clear tonality: there is a tritone from the third note, and we can already hear the Chinese gong and the xylophone, which add a touch of the Orient. Puccini uses a series of D minor chords over which he places a C sharp major, creating a dissonant and brutal effect. It is the year 1924. Of course, ‘pithier’ music existed at the time, with more deconstructed harmonies; Puccini continues to write in a very tonal style, but with more suspenseful moments, like this opening.

Act One

To win the hand of Princess Turandot in marriage, a suitor must solve three riddles. Failure to do so will result in death. That is the fate awaiting the Prince of Persia, who is to be executed at moonrise.

Ouri Bronchti: Amid this very intense scene, describing the violence of the ritual of the three riddles, we suddenly get an ethereal, vaporous passage about the moon when the children’s choir is heard for the first time. Indicated in the score as being offstage, it is accompanied by the gongs, celesta and two saxophones, an instrument that was still very recent at the time and extremely rare in opera. This passage evinces a different, much more innocent musical colour. By positioning the children offstage, Puccini doesn’t create concrete characters; they are like an inner voice, the evocation of a memory. And the choirs on stage accompany them with their mouths closed, creating a truly magical atmosphere. What is also particularly interesting is that Puccini composed this extract from the melody of a music box brought back for him from China. Like many other composers at the time, he was very interested in orientalism. This music had just been discovered in the West, not least thanks to the Expositions Universelles in Paris. But Puccini deserves credit for his research into real traditional Chinese melodies.

Among the onlookers are the slave girl Liù and her blind master, who stumbles in the tumult. A young, unknown prince rushes to the aid of the old master and recognizes in him the man he was looking for: his long-lost father, the vanquished King Timur. Liù in turn recognizes the prince, with whom she has been secretly in love ever since he bestowed a smile upon her years earlier. The crowd greets the rising moon in icy silence. A moment ago they were calling for blood, but now they beg Turandot to show compassion. However, she does not succumb to their pleas and wordlessly approves the execution. The unknown prince is enchanted by Turandot and determines to win her for himself at all costs, much to the dismay of Liù and Timur. Though the three ministers Ping, Pang and Pong try to talk the prince round, he remains resolute and with a strike of the gong announces himself as the new suitor.

Act Two

Ping, Pang and Pong lament Turandot’s bloody rule. Their thoughts turn to the idyllic life they once enjoyed in the country, but they are jolted back to reality by the noisy crowd gathered around the mysterious prince. Though the old emperor (in this production an empress) Altoum tries to talk the prince out of his decision to win Turandot’s hand, he refuses to be discouraged. Turandot appears and tells the story of her forebear, Princess Lo-u-Ling, who was abducted, maltreated and finally murdered. By way of revenge, Turandot has decided that no man will ever possess her.

Ouri Bronchti: How could we not mention Turandot’s arrival on stage? Apart from a silent appearance in the first act, the princess goes unseen for almost an hour of the opera. Her first sung number comes exactly halfway through the work. But her name often crops up, and what is said is not favourable. So delaying the arrival of the title character creates huge tension. Puccini’s arias are generally quite short. Here, as Turandot sings the longest aria in the opera, we can tap into her psyche, its length allowing for many nuances. She tells the story of her grandmother Lo-ou-Ling, who was violated and murdered. We sense that she is obsessed, indeed haunted and possessed by this story and by her ancestor’s suffering. The music is nothing short of sublime, despite the fact that it includes very few melodies. In both the middle and top notes, we hear mainly cohesive movements, very simple, very gentle, in an almost ghostly atmosphere. We hear a progression, followed by violent, heart-rending intervals when, for example, the princess evokes the cries of her Lo-ou-Ling and declares: “Mai nessun m’avrà!” (No one will ever possess me.)

One by one, she puts the three riddles to the unknown prince, who – to her horror – answers each one correctly. The crowd erupts with joy and the princess begs her father (here, her mother) not to force her to marry. But to no avail. Then the prince makes Turandot a counter proposal: if she finds out his name before sunrise, he will release his claim on her.

Act Three

Voices ring out in the night: “On pain of death, nobody will sleep until the name of the unknown prince is discovered.” Ping, Pang and Pong first try to bribe the prince, and then with the backing of the crowd threaten him with torture if he does not divulge his name. Suspected of knowing something about the mysterious prince, Timur and Liù are led away. When Turandot appears, Liù declares that only she knows the prince’s identity and that she will never reveal it. Even when the soldiers threaten to torture her, she refuses to utter a word in any language. Taken aback by her resolve, Turandot asks Liù what it is that gives her the strength to resist. Love, she replies. When the pressure becomes insufferable, Liù tells Turandot that one day she, too, will understand what love is. She then commits suicide. Shocked by Liù’s death, the crowd carries her body away in a cortège, followed by a totally bewildered Timur. Turandot and the unknown prince find themselves alone….

Ouri Bronchti: Liù is the real heroine of this opera. Three arias are allocated to her, which is more than to the other two main roles. Admittedly, these arias are short, but given their infinite beauty, this is not insignificant. She is the ‘Puccinian’ heroine par excellence: pure, tragic, prepared to sacrifice herself for unattainable love. Her suicide and Timur’s lamentations are the last notes composed by Puccini. An E flat minor chord repeated by the strings, with the piccolo softly skimming over the top. It is a kind of sublime funeral music, inspired by a traditional Chinese melody reserved for emperors; the young slave is ennobled, in that respect reminiscent of Mozart’s treatment of servants’ roles. It is a homage to the common people. When the work was created, the conductor Arturo Toscanini left off at this precise point and didn’t play the end of the opera composed by Franco Alfano from Puccini’s last sketches. So in a sense, Liù’s death is also Puccini’s death. He died in Brussels, so for me there is something very moving about being able to perform this music at La Monnaie.

Translation: Alison Mouthaan

The story and musical highlights

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Opening Night

Turandot’s Empire

Turandot

‘He closed his eyes forever with Liù’

Behind the Scenes

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Opening Night

Turandot’s Empire

Turandot

‘He closed his eyes forever with Liù’

Turandot

Inside the Music Turandot