Friday

24.06.2016

21:00

Main Stage - Trg Leona Štuklja square

Opera

OPERA UNDER THE STARS: TURANDOT

Giacomo Puccini: Turandot

Director: Filippo Tonon
Conductor: Loris Voltolini

The opera Turandot (1924), which was unfinished at the time of Puccini’s and posthumously completed by Franco Alfano, is a thrilling fairy tale intensifying into myth.

It is the story of the legendary ice-cold princess, Turandot, beautiful beyond compare, who puts her suitors to the test of three riddles and then has them beheaded when they cannot answer them. Finally (after murder and mayhem), she is bested by an unknown Prince (Calaf) and the power of love. Puccini, who knew that he was dying, wrote some of his most rapturous and urgent music for this opera of love, mystery and deceit. The battery of gongs, xylophones and chimes that he uses to portray a fabled China’s Imperial City, gives the orchestration an ominousness and a sumptuousness unlike anything else. The writing for chorus and small vocal ensembles is Puccini at his most accomplished and atmospheric. Among arias one can find the beloved Nessun dorma, one of the most famous tenor arias ever composed.

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