Turandot, August 10, 1985
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Festival Concert No. 20 Program Notes SOMMERFEST is co-sponsored by· ~ the Minnesota Orchestral Association and weco Televisionwcco~v by Mary Ann Feldman Sponsonng.'., assIstance b. y lbd So6teJ MinoeapoIis Turandot Saturday, August 10, 1985 ' Orchestra Hall By Giacomo Puccini 8:00 p.m, Born December 22, 1858, Lucca; died November 29, 1924, Brussels FESTIVAL FINALE: OT Instrumentation: 2 piccolo, 3 flutes, LEONARD SLATKIN conducting 2 oboes, English hom, 2 B-flat clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons" contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, SIX O'CLOCK SERENADE NO.4 Orchestra Hall, 6:00 p.m. timpani, triangle, snare drum, bass' drum, ROSSINI cymbals, tamtam, Chinese-gongs, glocken- spiel, xylophone, bass xylophone, tubular Introduction, Theme' and Variations, for Horn and Piano bells, celesta, 2 harps, organ and strings. Kendall Betts, horn; Jeffrey Siegel, piano Stage hand parts: alto saxophone, 6 trum- PUCCINI/STEBBING pets, '4 trombones, woodblock and low gong Two Arias for Two Cellos and Piano Vissi d'arte, from Tosca , If I do not succeed infinishing the' Musetta's Waltz, from La Boheme opera, someone will come to, the Paul Thomas and Eric Wahlin, cellos; Jeffrey Siegel, piano front of the stage and say, "Puc- cini composed as far as this, then RESPIGHI he died." Pioggia, from Six Lyrics {c.1919-1920). -Puccini, concerned that he would MALIPIERO not live to complete Turandot v Three Poems of Angelo Poliziano BACKGROUND 1. Inno a Maria Nostra Donna 2. L'eco 3. Ballata On the opening night of Turandot in CASTELNUOVO- TEDESCO Milan, April 25, 1926, just as the proces- Selections from Four Shakespeare Songs sion bearing the body of Lit! had passed from the stage, Arturo Toscanini laid 1. Orpheus and His Lute (1924) 2. Where the Bee Sucks (1926) down his baton 'and turned to the audi- Linda Hohenfeld, soprano; Jeffrey Siegel, piano ence to declare: "The opera ends here, LISZT for at this point the Maestro died." And Paraphrase on Themes from Verdi's Ernani (1847) the performance was over, though on subsequent nights the opera continued Jeffrey Siegel, piano with the ending that had been completed PUCCINI r Turandot (complete concert performance) Turandot LINDA KELM, soprano Pong THOMAS FARACCO, tenor Liu k~" SUSAN-DUNN, soprano Emperor JON DAVID GRUETT, tenor Calaf JON FREDRIC WEST, tenor Mandarin RICHARD COWAN~ bass-baritone Timur ARNOLD VOKETAITIS, bass Attendant BARBARA NELSON" soprano Ping; VERNON HARTMAN, baritone .Attendant JOANNA JOHNSTON, soprano Pang GENE TUCKER, tenor , .Prince of Persia DA VIDREECE, tenor' THE DALE WARLAND SYMPHONIC CHORUS Dale Warland, Music Director; Sigrid Johnson, Assistant Conductor CHILDREN'S FESTIVAL CHORUS, Janice Kim,es, Director Performance time is approximately three hours, including two intermissions. 1 , . ; ...•. Used by arrangement with Associated Music Publishers, Inc., U.S. agent for G. Ricordi& Co., Milan. This concert is broadcast live throughout the region on Minnesota Public Radio stations, including KSJN-FM (91.1) in the Twin Cities, and throughout the country on stations of the American Public Radio Network. SHOWCASE SOMMERFEST 1985 77 r . by Franco Alfano, who worked with the ready written the music for this (speech. little of what Shakespeare often does, 36 rough pages of manuscript left by the He had set to work as early as January when he brings in three or four extraneous composer. This Sommer fest presentation, 1921, but the opera was to cost him more types who drink, use bad language, and under Leonard Slatkin, concludes with labors than any other. In the middle of speak ill of the King." But they do more ( Alfano's original version of. the ending, that year he told Adami, "Turandot is than comment on the action: they try to before it was truncated at the instigation groaning and travailing, but is pregnant dissuadeCalaf from competing in the rid- of Toscanini. Analysis demonstrates, with music." Puccini badgered his libret- dles,and when little Liu stabs herself, however, how closely Alfano followed tists for countless changes in, the book, Ping sings in sorrow, "Ah, forthe first the master's vague and at times almost in... even though he worried that he would not time I do not sneer at seeing death." decipherable sketches, for he did not take survive to finish it, especially after the Turandot traveled fast: two months the task lightly. Mary Garden. recalled longtime cigarette-smoker began to suffer after the La Scala premiere, it was pro- that when Alfano gave a reading of his from the first symptoms of throat cancer duced at the Teatro Col6n in Buenos ending for the publisher Ricordi and the in 1923. He had begun orchestrating the Aires, and a month after that it was intro- Puccini family, he underwent such stress completed portions in 1922, plagued by duced in Dresden. By October 1926, the that he was temporarily blinded. by a the fleetness of time. "Also I am old, " he Viennese were cheering a sensational Tur- .hemorrhage of the eyes. His much criti- addressed Adami. "Of that there is no andot that opened with Lotte Lehmann cized decision to bring back the strain of doubt." and Leo Slezak, and in November Puc- the opera's hit tune, "Nessun dorma," is Progress was slow, partly because' of cini's work came to the Metropolitan justified in Puccini's correspondence with "this Chinese world," he said. "I, don't Opera, where its most famous revival in r his librettists,where he advises: "Then I feel comfortable in China." Yet he had recent years was the 1961 production with beg you to think about the grand finale, carefully researched the Chinese music Birgit Nilsson and Franco Corelli. in the meter of the tenor's aria for the sent to him from London (some of I am a mighty hunter final phrase, as we decided 'upon it." The which, such as the Imperial Hymn and of wild birds, beautiful precedent had been set in both La the folksongs that underlie the Ping/-- women and. good librettos. Boheme and Tosca, for the orchestras of Pang/Pong music,is incorporated skill- . -Puccini each bring back the biggest tune of the fully into the score), and he studied the final act. oriental instruments in the collection of . Puccini was in his 60s when he began his . his neighbor, Baron Fassini. Time was last and perhaps greatest opera, a work of running out when he wrestled with the cli- opulent melody' and extravagant, vivid or- max of the last act, which he was deter- SYNOPSIS chestration that elevated him to the heights mined should explode with love. He ago- Place: Peking of Wagner and Richard Strauss, In the fall nized over the duet - between Calaf and of 1920 he traveled to Vienna for the Turandot, leaving several line and har- Time: Legendary Austrian premieres of La Rondine and II mony sketches for music that would be ACT I. Outside the walls of the Imperial Trittico. The trip gave him enormous. "like Tristan" -a blend of catharsis and Palace. Affixed to the poles at the top of pleasure, and he wrote of the 'Viennese to . transformation. the wall is a grim sight: the heads of those his friend' Sybil Seligman: "They're the He urged his librettists: "It must be a who failed to solve the riddles posed by nicest people in the world-after Sybil." great love duet. These two beings, almost the cold and beautiful Princess Turandot. But he was restless for his new libret- removed from the world, are brought A fiercely dramatic motif unlocks the to- the tale of the Chinese Princess Tur- back to earth by love, and this love at the scene and recurs throughout Act I. In the andot that had, been suggested by Renato end will have to envelop all those on stage midst of a vast crowd a mandarin reads Simoni, a scholar of-the works of Carlo in a great orchestral peroration .... " the imperial decree: it is ordained by law Gozzi; whose 1762 play had aroused such But it was too late. In terrible suffering that Turandot, the pure, will wed the interest in the fable among the romantics, following throat surgery, Puccini died in man, of royal blood, who solves her three and by Giuseppe Adami, the librettist of Brussels before finishing the opera with enigmas. Fate was against the Prince of his two previous works. The composer which he had set out to break new ground. Persia: at the rising of the moon, he will himself had been entranced by Max Rein- Alfano completed the last fourteen or so die by the executioner's hand. As the fren- hardt's Berlin production of a German minutes of music (several minutes more zied crowd, fully integrated into' the ac- adaptation of Turandot, and he was anx- than the version commonly performed), tion, cries for his death ("Moia!Noi ious to get started on-in his words- "the and Turandot quickly became the most- vogliamo il carnefice! "), there appears the passion of Turandot who for so long has performed Italian opera of the twentieth fallen figure of Timur, the defeated Tartar been suffocated beneath the ashes of her 'century-in fact, the last Italian opera to king, led by his faithful slave Liu, A immense pride." At least seven other opera achieve a worldwide popularity. Puccini's / young man makes his way to help Timur, composers had already written a Turandot; own words make way for the perform- who instantly recognizes him as his son his own teacher Bazzini had composed such ance, as he playfully prophesied the out- Calaf, whom he thought lost in battle. In a workeand Busoni's opera of the same title come of his masterpiece: "I am writing a order, to conceal his identity, Calaf re- had been premiered as recently as 1917.