Music History Monday: Puccini’s Turandot: An Opera That Almost Wasn’t

We mark the premiere performance on April 25, 1926 – 96 years ago today – of Giacomo Puccini’s twelfth and final opera, Turandot.  The premiere took place at Milan’s storied La Scala opera house and was conducted by Puccini’s friend (and occasional nemesis!) Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957).  At the time of the premiere, Puccini himself had been dead for 17 months.  And therein lies our tale.  Because given the delays in creating the libretto for Turandot, Puccini’s failing health, his leaving the opera incomplete at his death, and the controversy surrounding Turandot’s subsequent completion by the composer Franco Alfano (1875-1954), itwas indeed an opera that almost didn’t happen. Giacomo Puccini was born in the Tuscan city of Lucca on December 22, 1858, and died in Brussels, Belgium on November 29, 1924, three weeks shy of his 66th birthday.  Puccini’s operas remain among the most popular in the repertoire, but among the most critically controversial as well.  It is a controversary we will not discuss in this post; rather, I’d direct you to Music History Monday for January 14, 2019.  That post – on Puccini’s opera Tosca – wades chin-deep into the critical issues that continue to dog his work. Sometime in […]

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