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Turandot
by Giacomo Puccini
Bulgarian State Opera
Saturday, February 17, 2007
at 8:00 pm
Main Stage - $40
“In legendary times, in the city of Peking, there dwelt the Princess Turandot. She was to be won only by a royal suitor who could answer
three riddles. If he failed, he was to be executed.”
Halfway through the final act, at the premiere of Turandot in 1926, the music stopped, Arturo Toscannini laid down his baton, turned to
the audience and said: “Here the Maestro laid down his pen.” Suffering from cancer of the throat, Puccini had not lived to complete the
score of his last opera. Bolder in its orchestration and with a new mastery of choral effect, there is more dramatic power in Turandot than
in anything he had done for twenty years. His friend, Franco Alfano, completed the score with help from Puccini’s notes for the final duet.
Join us at Staller Center to hear the three riddles…and the answers… as well as one of Puccini’s most famous tenor arias, Nessun
dorma – “No one must sleep.” Turandot is a fully-staged opera sung in Italian with projected supertitles and live orchestra, performed
by Bulgaria’s famed Opera Company in a return visit to Staller.
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