Butterfly Princess Child Costume

Mobile Opera will close its 2011-2012 season with Puccini's epic 'Turandot ...

18.05.12

Unfinished at the time of Puccini’s death in 1924, “Turandot” posed a serious challenge to composer Franco Alfano, charged with completing the opera. MOBILE, Alabama — As he lay dying, Giacomo Puccini wrote some of his most radiant music for “Turandot,” and almost a century later the composer’s deathbed masterpiece still moves audiences to tears. Puccini had begun work on “Turandot” in 1920 when he was approached by librettists Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni to adapt Gozzi’s fairy tale as an opera. Maestro Arturo Toscanini, scheduled to conduct the premiere of “Turandot,” was not happy with the Alfano ending, which he revised. Revisions and complications aside, “Turandot” has endured for more than eight decades. Three years later, he finished the second act and had begun orchestration when he fell ill. the Act I finale, “Ah. per l’ultima volta.

Source: al.com