Organization

DomStufen-Festspiele

Singer

Soprano

Irina Rindzuner

Turandot

Carter Scott

Tenor

Robert Wörle

The Emperor Altoum

Bass

Vazgen Gazaryan

Timur

Sebastian Pilgrim

Marc Heller

Calaf

Sergej Nayda

Ricardo Tamura

Marisca Mulder

Liù

Ilia Papandreou

Baritone

Florian Götz

Ping

Máté Sólyom-Nagy

Jörg Rathmann

Pang

Thomas Stückemann

Benedikt Nawrath

Pong

Marwan Shamiyeh

Juri Batukov

A Mandarin

Conductor

Samuel Bächli

Stage director

Marc Adam

Costume designer

Pierre Albert

Set designer

Hsiu-Chin Tsai

Theater Erfurt

Erfurt

Germany

Domstufen

Turandot Puccini

Public

Approved

The Chinese king's daughter Turandot hates all men and will never give herself to any of them in order to avenge the wrong done to her ancestress Lo-uling. She therefore poses three unsolvable riddles to all the princes who ask for her hand in marriage. Since none of the applicants know the right answers, they are all handed over to the executioner. Against his better judgment and the warnings of his father Timur and the slave Liù, the young prince Calaf dares to present himself as a suitor. When, miraculously, he gives the right answers, Turandot is beside himself. But Calaf is willing to release her from her oath if she has guessed his name by dawn. On Turandot's orders, a search for the name is now being carried out across the country. Liù claims to be the only one who knows the name. When she is supposed to give him up under threat of torture, she stabs herself. Turandot, impressed by Liù's love and greatness, still doesn't want to change her attitude. Now it's up to Calaf himself to unravel the mystery of his identity and help love triumph over death.

Giacomo Puccini worked on his last stage work for more than four years, from 1920 until his death. At a meeting with the writers Adami and Simoni in the spring of 1920, he became aware of the Turandot material. However, he did not choose Carlo Gozzi's original tragic comedy of 1762 as the libretto, but Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of Turandot, Prinzessin von China (1802), in the Italian translation of the poet Andrea Maffei from 1857. Puccini unfolds in Turandota previously unknown exotic colorfulness in the orchestra - also using original Chinese melodies - which captures the splendor of the old Chinese empire as well as the cold cruelty of the protagonist. However, he could no longer find the "distinctive, beautiful, unusual melody" for the planned final duet between Turandot and Calaf, he died at work on November 29, 1924, Turandot remained a torso and experienced the triumphal one posthumously in April 1926 at the Milan Scala World premiere, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Puccini was no longer allowed to complete the opera, to credibly portray the transformation of the title character from the icy angel of death to a loving woman. But Turandot became, in the words of the great opera researcher Ulrich Schreiber, "despite the unfinished state, not only to a masterpiece [...], but also to Puccini's most cogent answer to Nietzsche's rhetorical question: 'Aren't love and death brothers and sisters?'"

English

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Co-Producer