Turandot

“All’alba vincerò—at sunrise I will win,” the unknown prince proclaims to the city, making him one of the few heroes in Italian opera whose insomnia stems from confidence rather than despair. The residents of the city, however, are left to despair, for—“nessun dorma”—no one is allowed to sleep, since everyone, by the highest order and under threat of the death penalty, must search for the name of the stranger. One hundred years after the premiere of Puccini’s opera—which remained a fragment—Anna-Sophie Mahler set out in search of the “aura of love” with which the composer sought to soothe the nerves stretched to the breaking point in the opera’s finale, and found it in Wagner. Puccini envisioned music that transcended boundaries, aimed more at cosmic principles than at the characters’ psychologies. “Poi Tristano,” he jotted down on a piece of paper shortly before his death in a Brussels hospital. We are happy to fulfill this wish: So, to conclude : Tristan. And Isolde. *




* *Dramma lirico* in three acts
Featuring “Isolde’s Liebestod” (concert version) from Richard Wagner’s *Tristan und Isolde*
Libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, based on Carlo Gozzi

by Giacomo Puccini

Part 1: approx. 35 min.
Intermission: approx. 25 min.
Part 2: approx. 1 hour 20 min.