Turandot

by Giacomo Puccini
Dramma lirico in three acts
Libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni after Carlo Gozzi
"All'alba vincerò - at sunrise I shall win", the unknown prince bawls out to the city, making him one of the few heroes of Italian opera whose sleeplessness is due to confidence rather than despair. Instead, the inhabitants of the city must despair, in which - "nessun dorma" - no one is allowed to sleep because everyone must search for the name of the unknown prince at the highest command and under threat of the death penalty. 100 years after the premiere of Puccini's fragmentary opera, Anna-Sophie Mahler went in search of the "fluid of love" with which the composer wanted to pacify the tense nerves in the opera's finale, and found it in Wagner. Puccini envisioned music that would transcend boundaries and focus on cosmic principles rather than the psychology of the characters. He wrote "Poi Tristano" on a note shortly before his death in a Brussels hospital. We are happy to comply with this wish: Tristan at the end. And Isolde.