"Nessun dorma" (1926)
"None shall sleep" — the prince's Act III aria, ending "All'alba vincerò!"; sung here by Aureliano Pertile in 1927
Recording: Giacomo Puccini(1858 - 1924), Aureliano Pertile (1885-1952) · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Opera · Italian opera
Turandot
25 April 1926, Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Giacomo Puccini · libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni
A Chinese princess sets three riddles to every suitor and executes those who fail. An unknown prince answers all three, then offers her a riddle of his own: discover his name by dawn and he will die. Puccini died before finishing the final duet, and the opera stops where his manuscript does.
How to spot them
- ▸Legendary Peking: an ice-cold princess, a pile of severed heads, three comic ministers, a blind exiled king and a slave girl
- ▸Steely dramatic soprano, heroic tenor, lyric soprano slave, bass father; huge chorus and gongs
- ▸The famous moment: the prince, forbidding anyone to sleep, promises that at dawn he will win
- ▸Quiz clues: Gozzi, Adami and Simoni, Toscanini laying down his baton, Alfano's completion, and Italia '90
Arias & moments — listen
"In questa reggia" (1926)
The princess explains the ancestral rape and murder she is avenging on every man who comes
Recording: Bianca Scacciati Et Francesco Merli, Giacomo Puccini · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Non piangere, Liù" (1926)
The prince comforts the slave girl who has followed his blind father into exile
Recording: Alessandro Granda, Giacomo Puccini · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
"Signore, ascolta!" (1926)
Liù begs him not to strike the gong and take the riddle test
"Tu che di gel sei cinta" (1926)
The slave girl, tortured for the prince's name, foretells that her tormentor will love him too, then seizes a dagger
"Ho una casa nell'Honan" (1926)
The three ministers Ping, Pang and Pong long for their country houses instead of the executioner's work
Quick-fire facts
- •Puccini died of complications after treatment for throat cancer in Brussels on 29 November 1924, leaving the final duet unfinished.
- •Franco Alfano completed the score from Puccini's sketches; Toscanini cut his ending heavily.
- •At the premiere at La Scala on 25 April 1926 Toscanini stopped after Liù's death, where Puccini's own writing ends.
- •The libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni is based on Carlo Gozzi's 1762 play Turandot, itself from a Persian story collection.
- •The three riddles' answers are hope, blood and Turandot herself.
- •The three masked ministers Ping, Pang and Pong derive from commedia dell'arte, via Gozzi.
- •Puccini quotes genuine Chinese melodies, including the tune known as "Mo Li Hua" (Jasmine Flower), as the princess's theme.
- •Luciano Berio wrote an alternative completion, first performed in 2002.
- •"Nessun dorma", in Luciano Pavarotti's recording, was the BBC's theme for the 1990 football World Cup and reached the UK singles chart.
- •It was Puccini's last opera and the last Italian opera to enter the standard international repertoire.
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) — Turandot
- Julian Budden — Puccini: His Life and Works
- Stanley Sadie (ed.) — The New Grove Dictionary of Opera