The curious case of Turandot's finale
The composer famously died before he could finish the opera — and that's where the most fascinating story started...
Composer Giacomo Puccini’s epitaph could well be taken from the Unknown Prince’s own words in 'Nessun dorma’, the world’s most famous aria: “Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me” (“my secret is hidden within me”). For although he left 36 sheets of manuscript sketches upon his death intended for the end of Turandot, there was no clear indication in them of the ultimate finale he envisaged.
The path that led to the ending known by audiences was a rocky one, and there's still debate as to whether the happy ending – which follows three fairly tormented acts and was completed by another composer – lives up to the rest of Puccini's opera.
In February 1924, Puccini, having already spent several years on what would be the last of his great musical dramas, began to suffer from a sore throat. It was nine months before the diagnosis of a tumour in his throat was confirmed. Surgical intervention was not yet an option. So, having heard of a clinic in Belgium with a new ‘experimental’ type of radium therapy, Puccini travelled to Brussels with his son, Antonio. His musical sketches for the envisaged final scene travelled with them. The treatment for the tumour involved radioactive needles and a tracheotomy and, after three weeks, Puccini suffered a heart attack and died on 29 November 1924, at the age of 65.
Giacomo Puccini at the piano (Alinari Archives, Milan)
Giacomo Puccini at the piano (Alinari Archives, Milan)
Puccini's son engaged Franco Alfano, a respected composer of opera in his own right, to complete the opera; a daunting and ultimately thankless task which nearly robbed Alfano of sight.
Enter the villain in the plot, legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini, who had collaborated closely on the composition and was Puccini’s choice to conduct the opera’s premiere. Toscanini worked closely with the publishers, Ricordi, who owned the rights to written score as well as the sketches.
Opening Night came on Sunday 25 April 1926, and Toscanini stopped the performance at the final notes Puccini wrote, two measures after the words "Liù, poesia!" in Act III. According to a newspaper report, Puccini said to Toscanini: "If I don't succeed in finishing it, at this point someone will come to the footlights and will say: 'The author composed until here, and then he died.'" Toscanini remained true to this direction and did just that before the curtain slowly lowered. There are varying accounts of exactly the phrasing, but the performance ceased before the final scene.
In that inaugural performance, Franco Alfano's brilliant addition was omitted altogether as Toscanini insisted that Puccini had played him his intended final Great Duet a month before he died, and Alfano's composition was inadequate.
Despite this, Alfano’s ending was performed for the rest of the season. However, before the second performance, Toscanini viciously trimmed Alfano’s score by 109 bars – over a third of its completed length.
That cut version remained standard in all performances worldwide until 1982 when Alfano’s complete final scene was premiered by the Chelsea Opera Group at the Barbican Centre in London. In the first Opera Australia production in 1967, several more pages of the vocal score were cut – omitting Turandot’s “Del primo pianto” moment.
A few attempts by various composers to write a new finale were quickly annihilated by the publishers, including one by the American composer Janet Maguire in the 1980s. Some productions worldwide present the complete Alfano score which requires extravagant orchestral forces, but the standard ‘Toscanini’ version is what Opera Australia has performed since this production premiered in 1990. To some critics, the more recent reconstruction of Puccini’s sketches by the Italian composer Luciano Berio that premiered in 2002 comes closer to the original concep.
In an opera famed for riddles, the mystery of what Puccini would have composed for the finale to this exotic score will ever remain unanswered. The ending of his Turandot is his only ‘happy ending’ – there’s even some sadness in the closing scene of La fanciulla del West. Perhaps Puccini might have reversed his thoughts on the finale had he lived? At any rate, Turandot remains one of the top ten operas in popularity and upholds the theory that Puccini is the true master of verismo.
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