What is "turandot"

Turandot ( or ; ; see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, completed by Franco Alfano, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.

Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's 1801 adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot by Carlo Gozzi. The original story is based on Turan-Dokht (daughter of Turan) from the epic Haft Peykar ( The Seven Beauties), work of 12th-century Persian poet Nizami. The opera's story is set in China and involves Prince Calaf, who falls in love with the cold Princess Turandot. To obtain permission to marry her, a suitor has to solve three riddles; any wrong answer results in death. Calaf passes the test, but Turandot still refuses to marry him. He offers her a way out: if she is able to learn his name before dawn the next day, then at daybreak he will die.

The opera was unfinished at the time of Puccini's death in 1924, and was completed by Franco Alfano in 1926. The first performance was held at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 25 April 1926 and conducted by Arturo Toscanini. This performance included only Puccini's music and not Alfano's additions. The first performance of the opera as completed by Alfano was the following night, 26 April, although it is disputed whether this was conducted by Toscanini again or by Ettore Panizza.

Turandot (1762) is a commedia dell'arte play by Carlo Gozzi after a supposedly Persian story from the collection Les Mille et un jours (1710–1712) by François Pétis de la Croix. NB Not to be confused with One Thousand and One Nights. Gozzi's Turandot was first performed at the Teatro San Samuele, Venice, on 22 January 1762.

Gozzi's play has given rise to a number of subsequent artistic endeavours, including combinations of: versions/translations by Schiller, Karl Vollmoeller and Brecht; theatrical productions by Goethe, Max Reinhardt and Yevgeny Vakhtangov; incidental music by Weber, Busoni and Wilhelm Stenhammar; and operas by Puccini, Busoni and Havergal Brian.

Turandot or the Whitewashers' Congress is an epic comedy by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. It was written during the summer of 1953 in Buckow and substantially revised in light of a brief period of rehearsals in 1954, though it was still incomplete at the time of Brecht's death in 1956 and did not receive its first production until several years later. It premièred on 5 February 1969 at the Zürich Schauspielhaus, in a production directed by Benno Besson and Horst Sagert, with music by Yehoshua Lakner.

The story is loosely based on Carlo Gozzi's commedia dell'arte play Turandot (1762), a production of which Brecht saw in Moscow in 1932, directed by Yevgeny Vakhtangov. From 1930 onwards, Brecht began to develop a version of his own, which became part of a wider complex of projects exploring the role of intellectuals (or " Tuis," as he called them) in a capitalist society. Brecht's protagonist is coarse, lacking the whimsical charm of Gozzi's portrayal and the aspiration to nobility in Schiller's adaptation (1801).

The play consists of 27 subdividing pictures in 10 major scenes. Its plot is about how to explain high cotton prices, although of a vast harvest. The prize for best explanation is Turandot. The big topic is the abuse of intellectual skills.

The play had its British première in an amateur production in 1970 and a professional production at the Oxford Playhouse in 1971.

Turandot is a 1926 opera by Giacomo Puccini.

Other works of that title include:

• Turandot (Gozzi) (1762), play by Carlo Gozzi, and its many later adaptations
• Turandot Suite (1904-5), orchestral suite by Ferruccio Busoni
• Turandot (Busoni) (1917), opera by Ferruccio Busoni
• Turandot (Brecht) (1953/54), play by Bertolt Brecht

Turandot is a 1917 opera with spoken dialogue and in two acts by Ferruccio Busoni. Busoni prepared his own libretto, in German, based on the play by Count Carlo Gozzi. The music for Busoni's opera is based on the incidental music, and the associated Turandot Suite ( BV 248), which Busoni had written in 1905 for a production of Gozzi's play. The opera is often performed as part of a double bill with Busoni's earlier one-act opera Arlecchino.