![]() Of this version, about three minutes were cut for performance by Toscanini, and it is this shortened version that is usually performed today. Ricordi's real concern was not the quality of Alfano's work, but that he wanted the end of Turandot to sound as if it had been written by Puccini, and Alfano's editing had to be seamless. ![]() After the severe criticisms by Ricordi and the conductor Arturo Toscanini, he was forced to write a second, strictly censored version that followed Puccini's sketches more closely, to the point where he did not set some of Adami's text to music because Puccini had not indicated how he wanted it to sound. Alfano provided a first version of the ending with a few passages of his own, and even a few sentences added to the libretto, which was not considered complete even by Puccini. Puccini's publisher Tito Ricordi II decided on Alfano because his opera La leggenda di Sakùntala resembled Turandot in its setting and heavy orchestration. ![]() Puccini's son Tonio objected, and eventually Franco Alfano was chosen to flesh out the sketches after Vincenzo Tommasini (who had completed Boito's Nerone after the composer's death) and Pietro Mascagni were rejected. Puccini left instructions that Riccardo Zandonai should finish the opera. His step-daughter Fosca was in fact joyfully writing a letter to an English friend of the family, Sibyl Seligman, telling her that the cancer was shrinking when she was called to her father's bedside because of the heart attack. He died of a heart attack on 29 November 1924, when it had seemed that the radium treatment was succeeding. Puccini, however, seems to have had some inkling of the seriousness of his condition since, before leaving for Brussels, he visited Toscanini and begged him, "Don't let my Turandot die". Puccini and his wife never knew how serious the cancer was, as the prognosis was revealed only to his son. ![]() There he underwent a new and experimental radiation therapy. On 10 October he was diagnosed with throat cancer, and on 24 November he went to Brussels, Belgium for treatment. However, he was dissatisfied with the text of the final duet, and did not continue until 8 October, when he chose Adami's fourth version of the duet text. In 1987, he bought the gongs for his collection, paying thousands of dollars for the set, which he described as having "colorful, intense, centered, and perfumed" sound qualities.īy March 1924, Puccini had completed the opera up to the final duet. Decades later, percussionist Howard Van Hyning of the New York City Opera had been searching for a proper set of gongs and obtained the original set from the Stivanello Costume Company, which had acquired the gongs as the result of winning a bet. Puccini commissioned a set of thirteen gongs constructed by the Tronci family specifically for Turandot. Puccini used three of these in the opera, including the national anthem (heard during the appearance of the Emperor Altoum) and, most memorably, the folk melody "Mo Li Hua" (Jasmine Flower) which is first sung by the children's chorus after the invocation to the moon in Act 1, and becomes a sort of 'leitmotif' for the princess throughout the opera. Baron Fassini Camossi, the former Italian diplomat to China, gave Puccini a music box that played a number of Chinese melodies. ![]() In his impatience, he began composition in January 1921, before Adami and Simoni had produced the text for the libretto. Puccini began working on Turandot in March 1920 after meeting with librettists Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. ![]()
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